Controller for Windfreak SynthHD v2 RF Generator

Helper code to control Windfreak's SynthHD RF generator.

Installation

pip install qt3rfsynthcontrol

Usage

Determine the port

import qt3rfsynthcontrol
qt3rfsynthcontrol.discover_devices()

Will return a list of ports and information about devices connected to those ports. For example

[['COM3',
  'Intel(R) Active Management Technology - SOL (COM3)',
  'PCI\\VEN_8086&DEV_43E3&SUBSYS_0A541028&REV_11\\3&11583659&1&B3'],
 ['COM5',
  'USB Serial Device (COM5)',
  'USB VID:PID=0483:A3E5 SER=206A36705430 LOCATION=1-2:x.0'],
 ['COM6',
  'USB Serial Device (COM6)',
  'USB VID:PID=04D8:000A SER= LOCATION=1-8:x.0'],
 ['COM7',
  'USB Serial Device (COM7)',
  'USB VID:PID=239A:8014 SER=3B0D07C25831555020312E341A3214FF LOCATION=1-6:x.0']]

It is certainly not obvious to which USB port the Windfreak is connected. However, using the Windows Task Manager, as well as trial and error, should eventually reveal the correct serial port to use.

Connection to SynthHD

rf_synth = qt3rfsynthcontrol.QT3SynthHD('COM5')

Hardware Info

rf_synth.hw_info()

Current Signal Status

rf_synth.current_status()

Set Fixed Frequency

channel_A = 0
channel_B = 1
rf_synth.set_channel_fixed_output(channel_A, power = -5.0, frequency = 2870e6)

Set Up For Frequency Scan

Frequency scan can either be triggered externally (using the Quantum Composer Sapphire pulser, or other), or can run independent of any external control.

channel_A = 0
channel_B = 1
rf_synth.set_frequency_sweep(channel_A, power = -5.0, frequency_low = 2820e6,
                            frequency_high = 2920e6, n_steps = 101,
                            trigger_mode = 'single frequency step',
                            frequency_sample_time = 0.100)

See the function's documentation for further details

help(rf_synth.set_frequency_sweep)

Turn RF ON/OFF

The RF generation can be turned on and off with

channel_A = 0
channel_B = 1
rf_synth.rf_on(channel_A)
rf_sythh.rf_off(channel_A)

Windfreak.SynthHD

If you wish to use the windfreak-python SynthHD object instance directly, you can obtain it from the property SynthHD. Usage of windfreak-python is documented here.

windfreak_synthhd = rf_synth.SynthHD()

print(windfreak_synthhd[0].power)
print(windfreak_synthhd[0].frequency)

The documentation is a little sparse, however. The full set of commands are found in

• the code
• the programming manual

It can take a little effort to match the python API with the description in the manual as some of the windfreak-python API functions do not exactly match the function name in the manual. For example sweep_single in windfreak-python is called sweep_run or run_sweep in the programming manual.

LICENSE

LICENCE