Products > Test Equipment

Open source lxi-tools v2.0 released

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lundmar:
Hello everyone!

I'm happy to announce the latest release of lxi-tools - see https://lxi-tools.github.io for more details.

lxi-tools is a collection of open source software tools for managing network attached LXI compatible test instruments such as modern oscilloscopes, power supplies, spectrum analyzers etc.

The lxi-tools open source project provides the following key components:

* "lxi" - a command line tool that features a simple interface for discovering LXI compatible instruments, sending SCPI messages, capturing screenshots, benchmarking, and scripted automation
* "lxi-gui" - a GUI application that features some of the same features as the command line tool and additional features such as a screenshot viewer and advanced scripting features
* "liblxi" - a C library which provides a high level API for LXI instrument discovery (using VXI-11 or mDNS/DNS-SD) and basic SCPI communication (using RAW/TCP or VXI-11/TCP)
Here are some screenshots of the lxi-gui application in action:








For details on how to use the commandline interface please see https://lxi-tools.github.io


Installation

GNU/Linux
Install latest stable version using snap:  $ snap install lxi-tools
Install latest development version using snap:  $ snap install lxi-tools --edge

Visit https://snapcraft.io to see how to install snap for your GNU/Linux distribution.

Mac OS
Install latest stable version using Homebrew:  $ brew install lxi-tools

Windows
You can install e.g. Virtualbox (see https://www.virtualbox.org) and install a GNU/Linux distribution (e.g. Ubuntu 21.10) in a VM in which you can install and run lxi-tools.

Note: Remember to reconfigure your VMs network interface to use a bridged network adapter (not NAT) else the default instrument search feature will not work.
Note: Soon Windows users will be able to easily install and run lxi-tools via WSL2/WSLg.



Motivation
This open source project is for people who don't care for the proprietary, costly, and often times inferior tools available for managing LXI compatible instruments. The very reason I authored lxi-tools/liblxi is because I want simpler and better tools for managing my test instruments. Stuff like NI VISA drivers/tools etc. are just too bloated for my taste and not really open source friendly. I think we can do better. After all, LXI is an open standard so why not make some proper open source tools to support it! :)

Thanks to everyone in this forum who are helping to test and improve lxi-tools!  :-+


Call for contributors
Anyone who would like to contribute to this project to help make it better is welcome to join in. All contributions are welcome (bug reports, code, feature ideas, doc, testing, etc.). All source is available on Github here.

P.S: lxi-tools is not in any way affiliated with the LXI consortium. It is a fully independent open source community effort.

optotester:
Thanks Martin :) and … good news for MacOS users. Last week I have been working on porting LXI tools to MacOS and I am 99% done (some discussion in progress with one of the GTK4 lead developer as there is some bugs in GTK itself). I will most likely release it this weekend. I will do a merge request on your GitHub on Wednesday to fix some issues and replace avahi by a mdns wrapper library for full compatibility with all OSes if you are ok with that.

lundmar:

--- Quote from: optotester on January 31, 2022, 10:53:19 pm ---Thanks Martin :) and … good news for MacOS users. Last week I have been working on porting LXI tools to MacOS and I am 99% done (some discussion in progress with one of the GTK4 lead developer as there is some bugs in GTK itself). I will most likely release it this weekend. I will do a merge request on your GitHub on Wednesday to fix some issues and replace avahi by a mdns wrapper library for full compatibility with all OSes if you are ok with that.

--- End quote ---

Great! That is excellent news.

For sure I am ok with that. :-+

I'm looking forward to your merge request whenever it is ready. If the mdns wrapper library works well then I expect it will be fine to replace using Avahi directly. We can make it a feature of the next release.

Meanwhile I will start the process of making lxi-tools available via https://flathub.org

lundmar:
Unfortunately I can't easily distribute a flatpak of lxi-tools in places like flathub.org

The reason is that they do not allow my application ID to reflect my true reverse DNS domain. It is mostly for policy reasons and not so much technical ones. It's all very silly.

So, if you prefer flatpak over snap, you will have to build and install the lxi-tools flatpak yourself. Instructions are available here:

https://github.com/lxi-tools/lxi-tools.flatpak

For now, snap is the way to go and maybe eventually the various distributions will include native packages of lxi-tools.

Sergeant82d:
Martin, and anyone else who can help me -

I was using the ver 1.21 beta on my Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB) lab computer successfully and enjoyably, connecting and controlling my four late model Siglent machines.

So I was happy yesterday when ver 2.0 was announced, and immediately tried to install it. Key word there is "tried"...

After emailing Martin, I was successful in downloading and installing the updated version, but it doesn't run. The mouse cursor spins in an hourglass for a few seconds, but that is it.

I have "refreshed" the snap several times, and also I removed and reinstalled it, while also doing a --purge on it, to no avail.

I "know" it was installed - here is what I get when checking the version from the terminal:


--- Quote ---@raspberrypi:~ $ lxi --version
ERROR: ld.so: object '/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libarmmem-${PLATFORM}.so' from /etc/ld.so.preload cannot be preloaded (cannot open shared object file): ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object '/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libarmmem-${PLATFORM}.so' from /etc/ld.so.preload cannot be preloaded (cannot open shared object file): ignored.
lxi v2.0

--- End quote ---

Can anyone point me in the right direction to fix this?

Thanks,

Brad

(PS - first post on EEVB!)

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