.. epics documentation master file

Epics Channel Access for Python
=====================================

PyEpics is an interface for the Channel Access (CA) library of the `Epics
Control System <https://epics-controls.org/>`_ to the Python Programming
language.  The pyepics package provides an :mod:`epics` module to python,
with methods for reading from and writing to Epics Process Variables (PVs)
via the CA protocol.  The package includes a thin and fairly complete layer
over the lowest-level Channel Access library in the :mod:`ca` module, and
higher level abstractions built on top of this basic functionality.

The package includes a simple interface to CA similar to the Unix
command-line tools with functions :meth:`epics.caget`,
:meth:`epics.caput`, :meth:`epics.cainfo`, and
:meth:`epics.camonitor`.  For an object-oriented interface, there is a
:class:`pv.PV` class which represents an Epics Process Variable as a
full-featured and convenient Python object.  Additional modules
provide higher-level programming support to CA, including grouping
related PVs into a :class:`device.Device` (with a number of predefined
devices ready to use), for creating alarms in :class:`alarm.Alarm`,
and for saving PVs values in the :mod:`autosave` module.  There is
also support for conveniently using epics PVs to wxPython widgets in
the :mod:`wx` module, and some support for using PyQt widgets in the
:mod:`qt` module.

Some `applications <https://pyepics.github.io/epicsapps/>`_ built with
pyepics that are available at `https://github.com/pyepics/epicsapps/
<https://github.com/pyepics/epicsapps/>`_.

-----------

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 2

   installation
   overview
   pv
   ca
   arrays
   devices
   alarm
   autosave
   wx
   advanced
