• Open technologies: Python, an Open Source Language for the Mhaster datalogger
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    Open technologies: Python, an Open Source Language for the Mhaster datalogger

Open technologies: Python, an Open Source Language for the Mhaster datalogger

April 2018
Open technologies: Python, an Open Source Language for the Mhaster datalogger

Mhaster is proving to be the top-of-the-line among dataloggers: it is interoperable, open and programmable, and can perform any custom external command.

Specifically, the user is free to implement new customized features on the station that can either complement its normal functioning or replace the standard functioning if the customer so wishes, in case s/he wants to personally define how to manage the processes of acquisition and communication. Just to give a couple of examples demonstrating the possibility of going beyond the standard configurations, the user is free to programme applications that allow her/him to acquire custom sensors or to send data via FTP with third-party proprietary formats.

These additional processes, as well as in C and Shell scripts, can be written in Python, too: an extremely intuitive programming language, which involves the presence of an interpreter analysing and executing the source code written in simple text files.

The main advantage of this system is that, once a source message is written, it can be interpreted and executed on most operating systems (GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac), simply by having at your disposal the correct version of the interpreter.

Python is a free software: the download of the interpreter for your platform, as well as the use of Python in your own applications, is completely free; it can also be freely modified and redistributed according to the rules of a fully open-source license.

This language, which is widespread all over the world and essential for companies such as Google and YouTube, has also become part of CAE technology as it allows us to quickly develop even the most complex applications in any context.

The relevance of this language is also proved by the fact that, from the Academic Year 2017/18, the Bocconi University provides a Python programming course to all students of the first-cycle degree programmes. "Coding is the new English", as Rector Gianmario Verona has always emphasized.