Bluesky Spreadsheet Documentation

This is an experimental library for using an Excel spreadsheet to enter parameters and metadata for executing data acquisition with bluesky.

Using Excel for data and metadata entry has limitations, and given enough resources a proper database and GUI or web application is likely a better solution, but an Excel spreadsheet has proved to be a useful stepping stone for quickly prototyping a tool that makes users comfortable.

Design requirements:

  • The user can add rows during execution.

  • The user can modify rows that haven’t been executed yet.

  • If execution is interrupted, the plan will resume from the last row that it has not yet completed.

  • The plan can be started from a specific row.

  • The meaning of the columns in the spreadsheet is open-eneded and can be tuned to specific use cases. For example, the spreadsheet can be used to configure the hardware before an acquisition, specify the parameters of the acquisition itself, and configure how the data is visualized, processed, and/or exported.

  • If a cell is blank, the value from the previous cell in that column is used.