redsun¶

redsun is a Python toolkit for building your own modular software for scientific data acquisition. It builds on the Bluesky ecosystem and makes no assumptions about your hardware, so each lab can build the control software its experiments need.

To learn redsun, start with the tutorials, where you build one application step by step without any hardware.

About redsun¶

You describe your instrument in Python, and redsun assembles it into an application with a graphical interface. With redsun you can:

• describe an instrument as devices, presenters and views, and let a session build and connect them;
• change settings from a session file, without touching code;
• start and stop the services that drive your hardware, together with the application;
• run acquisitions as bluesky plans, each with a plan widget built from its parameters;
• use the built-in components for common tasks, so you write only what is specific to your instrument;
• give every acquisition file a place and a name, under one folder per session;
• search past runs in a catalog, if you choose to keep one.

The parts specific to your instrument come from you, or from a plugin you install: the devices and the services behind them, the presenters and views, and the plans for your acquisitions.

redsun isn't a ready-made microscope program. It comes with no hardware drivers and no image viewer, and it leaves writing the data to your devices. Why redsun exists has the details, and compares its parts with those of Micro-Manager.

How the documentation is structured¶

The documentation follows the Diataxis format and is split into the four sections below. The glossary defines the technical terms it uses.