The kernel appears to have died. It will restart automatically. (and other topics)

[Logics21]

I get the error "The kernel appears to have died. It will restart automatically" when running 01_Record_ai_multichan.py.

Other topics:
I forked this repository using a version I had previously created based on the old Tkinter implementation. The code runs, but it still needs optimization and ideally should be rewritten to use PyQt5 with PyQtGraph.

The DAQ_Settings.py script automatically detects the DAQ device and available channels. These settings can also be accessed directly from Multichannel_DAQ.py.

Settings are saved to an Excel file, which is then read by Multichannel_DAQ.py—plotting options are generated automatically based on that file. Custom channels can also be created in DAQ_Settings.py.

All channels are available as X-axis plotting options, and both duration and sample count can also be selected for the X-axis. The auto-save function isn’t working yet, but my original idea was to implement something similar to your recording settings feature—saving a log of the last run that could be accessed if the program crashes.
Configurable plot refresh rate and sampling rate to prevent performance issues when plotting at the full sample rate

Please try running it and let me know your thoughts.

I’m new to both GitHub and Python, but I’d really like to contribute to this project.

[muchaste]

Hi, please make sure that you use the latest version of the repo - the 01_Record_ai_multichan.py script is now based on PyQt5 and PyQtGraph. Does the kernel error persist on your setup? I couldn't reproduce it

I tried your app and it worked in general! Didn't test all the functions but here's some feedback (also from a non-IT specialist):

• the separate DAQ_Settings script seems like a good idea for complicated configurations (like your default conf. with many different i/o channels, etc.) - on my laptop screen, however, I had scaling issues - there were too many channels and I couldn't scroll down to reach the buttons
• I agree that a PyQt5-based version would be better - it works much more robustly with multiple processes and the pyqtgraph-based plotting is much better integrated than the clunky matplotlib plotting from TKinter
• to make the program as resilient as possible against crashes, it took me a while to figure out how to continuously write data to a file. I could only make it work with .bin files (which are larger than .feather files but can be read even if the program crashes and there are no magic bytes missing at the end of the file). If you find a different solution, I'd be interested in knowing ;)
• your Multichannel_DAQ app has a lot of functions and it seems designed for a specific use case. In case you want to make it more accessible, consider renaming some buttons or adding more documentation

I think that's all I got for now, let me know how it goes!

[Logics21]

I kept getting this error when running the code:

"QWidget: Must construct a QApplication before a QWidget"

to fix it I had to import PyQt5 before importing the rest of the libraries

import sys

# ---- IMPORT PYQT5 FIRST----
from PyQt5 import QtWidgets, QtCore, QtGui

# ---- NOW it's safe to import everything else ----
import os
import time
import threading
import collections
import numpy as np
import nidaqmx
from nidaqmx import constants
import pyqtgraph as pg
from scipy import signal
from datetime import datetime

Another fix is using the newer PySide6 instead of PyQt5

# from PyQt5 import QtWidgets, QtCore, QtGui
from PySide6 import QtWidgets, QtCore, QtGui

Update the app exec at the bottom:

# PyQt5 (Qt5):
# sys.exit(app.exec_())

# PySide6 / Qt6:
sys.exit(app.exec())

however the plotting becomes erratic