Use Python to Control Lab Equipment
I use 3 types of comms.
1. USB The most common one with the simplest HW requirements. USB cable. In linux you just need to install “pyvisa-py”, but in windows you need “pyvisa” & Keysight/NI visa driver.
2. RS232 Requires RS232 to USB cable with “pyserial-asyncio”.
3. Ethernet sockets Use built-in “asyncio stream”s to open socket comms. You would need a LAN cable
As for python versioning, I would recommend using pyenv
Windows - does not support virtualenv, but it is worth using https://github.com/pyenv-win/pyenv-win Linux - pyenv https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv
Don't have to use pyenv-win but linux pyenv is strongly recommended.
but the github page is kinda self-explanatory
IDE
I would say eclipse goes well with java & c. For python, it is either pycharm or vscode. I recommend vscode since it supports remote development