Cool Technology: IPython Notebooks

I may be very late to the party but I've recently discovered IPython notebooks.  IPython is an extremely useful Python shell environment that has been kicking around for 10+ years. Initially the number of advantages it offered over the built-in python shell was small.  But then again it started out as a couple of hundred line hack.  So back then it seemed like it wasn't worth the trouble to make sure it was install on all the machines you might hack Python on.

Fast forward to 2010 or so, IPython has reached a 1.0 milestone, and has evolved significantly to an extremely powerful platform.  However the aspect that I find the most useful is notebooks that display in a web browser.   It's supposed to be somewhat reminiscent of Mathematica which I've never used.

Notebooks contain blocks of executable Python code and their output.  The Python code can be edited and run/rerun right there from the browser.  But where it really gets interesting is that rich multimedia stuff, especially graphs can be displayed right there, in-line.  It's pretty enabling for scientific computing, enabling very short hacking and visualization cycles almost like a spreadsheet.

I really should write a lot more about this.  It's not just for Python, and it's not just for the web, it seems like it could be a big thing.  It should also make teaching and learning a lot easier.

Check out:

• The IPython Notebook
• How to run code in the IPython Notebook,
• Basic Output
• Rich display system
• matplotlib tutorial

I really like this example, reading a .WAV file and showing side by side plots of amplitude and spectrum:

There are a few things that I think could use improvement.

1. More Document Structure, Real Head 1, 2, 3 and Table of Contents.   I'm a big fan of Mediawiki's nice native built-in structure.  It really helps organize documents in my opinion.  It's also one of the biggest things lacking from Evernote (IMHO).
2. Native Tabular output widgets.  There are some extensions but they aren't quite there yet.  This could make an awesome SQL Workbench, but it could really use ways of presenting and working with tables as output cells.

Enjoy.

Rigol DS1052E/DS1102 and Linux, Python, usbtmc

[To Be Updated]
This is one of those intersections of electronics, open source, hacking, and programming that really gets my interest.

Here are some links with information on connecting the Rigol scope to Linux, and controlling it using Python via USB.  The scope implements the USB test and measurement class, usbtmc.

• Scruss.com: My Raspberry PI talks to my Oscilloscope
  • Python userspace version of USBTMC github -- This is useful because it seems the kernel usbtmc driver has bugs in even somewhat recent (3.11?) versions.
• Ken Shirriff: Four Rigol oscilloscope hacks with Python 2013-07-19,
• Controlling a Rigol Oscilloscope using Linux and Python, some rudimentary stuff for reading the scope and plotting it.
  • Hack-a-day entry for this
• Rigol Homebrew Wiki
  • Rigol DS1052E Homebrew for all original blog posts about writing custom firmware for the Rigol like pong.
  • Hack-a-day entry on Rigol Homebrew

Learning to Program / Learning Python.

This post is a summary of some of the responses I've sent to people about learning to program computers as well as learning the Python programming language:

I've heard good things about the book, "Hello World! Computer Programming for Kids and Other Beginners", It's a first book on programming using Python. While it appears to be aimed at kids, I've heard some adults have found it to be a good gentle introduction as well.

•  Amazon: Hello World! Computer Programming for Kids and Other Beginners

See my other post about free on-line college level classes, for info on Computer Science 101.  This class is due to start April 23rd, 2012.  Hopefully it will be a good resource for people with no formal CS background.

The same professor, Nick Parlante, developed a class on Python for Google:

"Welcome to Google's Python Class -- this is a free class for people with a little bit of programming experience who want to learn Python. The class includes written materials, lecture videos, and lots of code exercises to practice Python coding."

• http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python-class/

There are a number of resources for programmers who know other languages to learn Python.  These include:

• Mark Pilgrim's Dive Into Python, and Dive Into Python 3, which are both available freely on-line, or can be purchased as regular print books. The original DiveIntoPython.Org site seems to have been pulled down. I'm not sure what's going on with this. This book seems to be a good intro for programers, though there are some experienced Python People who feel there are some problems with this work.
• The Python Wiki has a good list of Python for Programmer resources.
• The Python Tutorial on the main Python Documentation (docs.python.org) site is also pretty good.