Adaura Technologies

This is a basic Python 3 library for the Adaura Technologies Programmable RF Attenuators. https://adauratech.com/attenuators/

At this time it has only been tested against a AD-USB4AR36G95 running Firmware version 1.21.

Some of the codebase is based upon example code provided at https://adauratech.com/attenuators/python-example/, but it has generally been rewritten as a Python module. It also has support for connecting via Serial, Telnet or using the HTTP interface. I'm unsure on how the firmware changes are likely to break functionality, but at this time I'd suggest that the HTTP interface is more robust than the Telnet interface.

Installation

I've not put this on pip, but it should be compatible with an SCM pip installation:

pip install git+https://github.com/ozonejunkieau/AdauraAttenuator.git

The requirements.txt file is generated based upon the version of packages I have installed, it is highly likely that older versions will work.

Usage

import AdauraAttenuator

Using the Serial Interface

Get a list of all attenuators found on the local USB bus, returned as a (serial, device) tuple.

found_attenuators = AdauraAttenuator.find_attenuators()

Automatically open a serial attenuator if found.

if len(found_attenuators) is 1:
    found_attenuator = found_attenuators[0]
    attenuator = ADAURAAttenuator(serial_number=found_attenuator[0],
                                    comport = found_attenuator[1],
                                    )

Using the Telnet Interface

attenuator = AdauraAttenuator(ip_address='111.111.111.111', 
                              connection=AdauraAttenuator.CONN_TELNET)

Using the HTTP Interface

attenuator = AdauraAttenuator(ip_address='111.111.111.111', 
                              connection=AdauraAttenuator.CONN_HTTP)

Get the attenuator information

info = attenuator.get_info()

info returns a dictionary as follows:

{'model': 'AD-USB4AR36G95',
 'sn': 'Rxxxxxxxx',
 'fw_ver': '1.21',
 'fw_date': '21/02/2019',
 'bl_ver': '3.00',
 'mfg_date': 'DEC2018',
 'default_attenuations': ['95.0', '95.0', '95.0', '95.0'],
 'ip_address': 'xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx',
 'ip_subnet': '255.255.255.0',
 'ip_gateway': 'xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx',
 'ip_dhcp': 'Enabled'}

Get the status of the attenuator

status = attenuator.get_status()

status returns a list of channel attenuations as follows:

[3.0, 95.0, 95.0, 95.0]

Set the attenuation on a channel

attenuator.set_attenuator(1,20)

If no error is raised, the process was succesful. Trying to set either an invalid channel or an invalid attenuation will result in:

OSError: Invalid attenuation specified.

Known Limitations

At the moment, there appears to be no way to dynamically discover the number of channels in the attenuator, so it is assumed to be 4.

Error trapping, logging, etc is minimalist.