CLI & Scripts

Laser Setup is launched with a single command, laser_setup, which we always run as uv run laser_setup so it executes inside the project environment.

The laser_setup command

laser_setup [PROCEDURE_OR_SCRIPT] [-d/--debug] [-v/--version]

Form	Effect
laser_setup	Open the main window (GUI hub).
laser_setup <Procedure>	Open an experiment window for that procedure.
laser_setup <script>	Run a registered utility script.
laser_setup -d …	Enable debug mode (simulate instruments).
laser_setup -v	Print the version and exit.

The positional argument is validated against the set of registered procedures and scripts, so laser_setup --help is also a quick way to list everything the current configuration recognizes:

uv run laser_setup --help

Both laser_setup (console) and laser_setup_gui (windowed) entry points exist; they call the same main() — the difference only matters for how a packaged binary opens a console window on Windows.

How dispatch works

main() calls setup() (which parses args and builds CONFIG) and then routes on the argument — see Architecture.

Bundled scripts

Scripts are plain functions registered under scripts: in config.yaml and shown in the Scripts menu. The defaults:

Script (CLI name)	Menu label	What it does
init	Init Config	Copy the config templates and a starter config.yaml into ./config/.
setup_adapters	Set up Adapters	Scan the VISA bus and write detected adapter addresses into instruments.yaml.
get_updates	Get updates	Check whether your clone is behind the GitHub remote; offer to pull.
parameters_to_db	Parameters to Database	Walk ./data/*.csv and build a SQLite database of all run parameters.
find_calibration_voltage	Find calibration voltage	Interpolate the laser voltage for a target optical power from a calibration CSV.

init

uv run laser_setup init

Creates config/config.yaml and config/templates/. Remember to copy the template files you reference into config/ (see Tutorial 4).

setup_adapters

uv run laser_setup setup_adapters

Auto-detects instrument addresses. Requires a VISA backend (details).

get_updates

uv run laser_setup get_updates

Uses GitPython to compare your local commit with the remote and tells you if a git pull is available. It warns if pyproject.toml changed (so you know to re-run uv sync).

parameters_to_db

uv run laser_setup parameters_to_db

Reads every CSV under the data directory, extracts the parameter header, and writes a SQLite database (one table per procedure, columns added dynamically as new parameters appear). Browse it with View → Database in the GUI. See Data & Output Files.

find_calibration_voltage

uv run laser_setup find_calibration_voltage

Prompts for a calibration CSV (produced by LaserCalibration) and one or more target powers in µW, then interpolates the corresponding driver voltages. See the LED power calibration protocol.

Adding your own script

Point a scripts: entry at any importable function:

scripts:
  my_tool:
    name: "My Tool"
    target: ${function:my_package.my_module.main}
    kwargs: {dry_run: true}

The function receives the kwargs as keyword arguments. If it accepts a parent argument it can integrate with the GUI (for dialogs); CLI invocation passes parent=None. See Registering in YAML.