Experiment manager

The core experiment execution engine: takes tasks from the experiment queue and schedules them by measurement/sequence/run hierarchy.

Overview

quatm/GUI/experiment/experiment_manager.py provides the experiment manager (ExperimentManager): the engine that takes tasks from the experiment queue (ExperimentQueue) and executes them. Its queue polling runs in a worker thread, and tasks are scheduled in the hierarchy measurement → repetition → sequence/scan → run.

Execution flow

queue_fn (worker thread polls the queue continuously)
  └─→ run (task wrapper: cleanup is guaranteed however the task ends)
       ├─→ start_measurement (measurement start hook)
       ├─→ start_sequence (sequence/scan start hook)
       │     └─→ … several run calls with varying parameters …
       ├─→ end_sequence (sequence end hook)
       └─→ end_measurement (measurement end hook; clears the task table)

Key methods

Method	Description
`queue_fn`	Continuously polls the queue for task dictionaries: selects tasks by priority, task number and scheduled time
`run`	Task run wrapper: finalises cleanly whether the task ends as Done/Terminated/Failed or is deleted
`pause`	Pauses the current experiment; calling it again resumes it
`terminate_experiment`	Graceful termination: lets the current run finish naturally before stopping
`start_measurement`, etc.	Invokes the experiment’s start/end hooks for each stage
`set_dict`	Writes a single parameter to an attribute of the experiment instance
`set_run_nr` / `set_rep_nr`	Synchronises the run/repetition index into the task dictionary and refreshes the table
`due_check`	Determines whether a task has reached its scheduled execution time
`start_queue` / `shutdown`	Starts / stops the resident queue worker
`update_table`	Notifies the GUI to refresh the displayed task table

Usage

from quatm.GUI.experiment.experiment_manager import ExperimentManager

manager = ExperimentManager(browser)   # browser supplies the queue and the UI
manager.start_queue()                  # start the resident queue worker

Tasks execute in a dedicated worker thread and do not block the GUI; when the browser closes it calls shutdown to stop the queue worker so that the process exits cleanly.