Progress Bar

Bluesky provides a progress bar add-on. For example, two motors moving simulateously make a display like this:

mtr1  9%|███▊                                       | 0.09/1.0 [00:00<00:01,  1.21s/deg]
mtr2100%|████████████████████████████████████████████| 1.0/1.0 [00:01<00:00,  1.12s/deg]

This display includes:

  • the name of the device (motor, temperature controller, etc.)

  • the distance (or degrees, etc.) traveled so far

  • the total distance to be covered

  • the time elapsed

  • the estimated time remaining

  • the rate (determined empirically)

The progress bar relies on the device to report its progress. If a device does not provide comprehensive information, a simpler progress bar will be shown, listing the names of devices being waited on and reporting which have completed.

mtr1 [No progress bar available.]
mtr2 [Complete.]

Any time the RunEngine waits on hardware the progress bar is notified. This includes, for example, waiting for a motor to move or waiting for a detector to trigger. (In bluesky jargon, the progress bar is notified any time the RunEngine processes a ‘wait’ command).

The progress bar is not set up by default. It must be attached to a RunEngine. This need only be done once (say, in a startup file).

from bluesky.utils import ProgressBarManager

RE.waiting_hook = ProgressBarManager()

Some motions are very quick and not worth displaying a progress bar for. By default, a progress bar is only drawn after 0.2 seconds. If an action completes before then, the progress bar is never shown. To choose a shorter or longer delay—say 5 seconds—use the parameter ProgressBarManager(delay_draw=5).

For more technical detail about communication between the device, the RunEngine, and the ProgressBarManager, read about the watch method in the Status object and waiting_hook in the RunEngine API Documentation.

The implementation of the progress bar itself makes use of tqdm, a lovely Python package for making a progress bar out of any iterable.