nidaqlib

Experiment-facing NI-DAQmx acquisition tools for Python.

nidaqlib is not a replacement for NI's nidaqmx-python. It is a typed, lifecycle-managed acquisition layer built on top of it, designed to fit the same scientific-instrumentation ecosystem as alicatlib and sartoriuslib.

Use nidaqlib when you want:

• declarative task specifications,
• consistent async/sync APIs,
• structured errors,
• block-oriented acquisition,
• TDMS / Parquet / SQLite / Postgres / CSV / JSONL logging,
• hardware-free tests,
• and unified experiment workflows across DAQ, flow controllers, and balances.

Status

nidaqlib is alpha software. The public API is usable, but may change before the first stable release. See docs/design.md for the architectural design.

Installation

uv add nidaqlib

Optional extras: nidaqlib[parquet], nidaqlib[postgres].

nidaqlib requires the platform NI-DAQmx driver runtime for any real-hardware operation. Tests do not — FakeDaqBackend covers the test surface.

Quickstart

import anyio

from nidaqlib import AnalogInputVoltage, TaskSpec, open_device


spec = TaskSpec(
    name="surface_temperatures",
    channels=[
        AnalogInputVoltage(
            physical_channel="Dev1/ai0",
            name="surface_tc_mv",
            min_val=-0.1,
            max_val=0.1,
        ),
        AnalogInputVoltage(
            physical_channel="Dev1/ai1",
            name="back_tc_mv",
            min_val=-0.1,
            max_val=0.1,
        ),
    ],
)


async def main() -> None:
    async with await open_device(spec) as session:
        reading = await session.poll()
        print(reading.values)


anyio.run(main)

Documentation

Full docs at https://graysonbellamy.github.io/nidaqlib/.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.