RC

The RC plugin implements a remote control interface for the Ginga viewer.

Plugin Type: Global

RC is a global plugin. Only one instance can be opened.

Usage

The RC (Remote Control) plugin provides a way to control Ginga remotely through the use of an XML-RPC interface. Start the plugin from the “Plugins” menu (invoke “Start RC”) or launch ginga with the --modules=RC command line option to start it automatically.

By default, the plugin starts up with server running on port 9000 bound to the localhost interface – this allows connections only from the local host. If you want to change this, set the host and port in the “Set Addr” control and press Enter – you should see the address update in the “Addr:” display field.

Please note that the host part (before the colon) does not indicate which host you want to allow access from, but to which interface to bind. If you want to allow any host to connect, leave it blank (but include the colon and port number) to allow the server to bind on all interfaces. Press “Restart” to then restart the server at the new address.

Once the plugin is started, you can use the ggrc script (included when ginga is installed) to control Ginga. Take a look at the script if you want to see how to write your own programmatic interface.

Show example usage:

$ ggrc help

Show help for a specific Ginga method:

$ ggrc help ginga <method>

Show help for a specific channel method:

$ ggrc help channel <chname> <method>

Ginga (viewer shell) methods can be called like this:

$ ggrc ginga <method> <arg1> <arg2> ...

Per-channel methods can be called like this:

$ ggrc channel <chname> <method> <arg1> <arg2> ...

Calls can be made from a remote host by adding the options:

--host=<hostname> --port=9000

(In the plugin GUI, be sure to remove the “localhost” prefix from the “addr”, but leave the colon and port.)

Examples

Create a new channel:

$ ggrc ginga add_channel FOO

Load a file:

$ ggrc ginga load_file /home/eric/testdata/SPCAM/SUPA01118797.fits

Load a file into a specific channel:

$ ggrc ginga load_file /home/eric/testdata/SPCAM/SUPA01118797.fits FOO

Cut levels:

$ ggrc channel FOO cut_levels 163 1300

Auto cut levels:

$ ggrc channel FOO auto_levels

Zoom to a specific level:

$ ggrc -- channel FOO zoom_to -7

(Note the use of -- to allow us to pass a parameter beginning with -.)

Zoom to fit:

$ ggrc channel FOO zoom_fit

Transform (arguments are a boolean triplet: flipx flipy swapxy):

$ ggrc channel FOO transform 1 0 1

Rotate:

$ ggrc channel FOO rotate 37.5

Change colormap:

$ ggrc channel FOO set_color_map rainbow3

Change color distribution algorithm:

$ ggrc channel FOO set_color_algorithm log

Change intensity map:

$ ggrc channel FOO set_intensity_map neg

In some cases, you may need to resort to shell escapes to be able to pass certain characters to Ginga. For example, a leading dash character is usually interpreted as a program option. In order to pass a signed integer, you may need to do something like:

$ ggrc -- channel FOO zoom -7

Interfacing from within Python

It is also possible to control Ginga in RC mode from within Python. The following describes some of the functionality.

Connecting

First, launch Ginga and start the RC plugin. This can be done from the command line:

ginga --modules=RC

From within Python, connect with a RemoteClient object as follows:

from ginga.util import grc
host = 'localhost'
port = 9000
viewer = grc.RemoteClient(host, port)

This viewer object is now linked to the Ginga using RC.

Load an Image

You can load an image from memory in a channel of your choosing. First, connect to a channel:

ch = viewer.channel('Image')

Then, load a Numpy image (i.e., any 2D ndarray):

import numpy as np
img = np.random.rand(500, 500) * 10000.0
ch.load_np('Image_Name', img, 'fits', {})

The image will display in Ginga and can be manipulated as usual.

Overlay a Canvas Object

It is possible to add objects to the canvas in a given channel. First, connect:

canvas = viewer.canvas('Image')

This connects to the channel named “Image”. You can clear the objects drawn in the canvas:

canvas.clear()

You can also add any basic canvas object. The key issue to keep in mind is that the objects input must pass through the XMLRC protocol. This means simple data types (float, int, list, or str); No arrays. Here is an example to plot a line through a series of points defined by two Numpy arrays:

x = np.arange(100)
y = np.sqrt(x)
points = list(zip(x.tolist(), y.tolist()))
canvas.add('path', points, color='red')

This will draw a red line on the image.