SCPI Command Reference

SCPI Commands

SignalShark supports the SCPI standard for remote controlled operation.

Standard Commands for Programmable Instruments (SCPI) is a standard that defines a syntax and command structure to remotely control measurement devices. The data exchange is text-based in ASCII format. For use in Python, data such as level or GNSS values must be converted from ASCII text to the corresponding Python data types.

The ‘nardascripting’ API takes care of the communication with the instrument and wraps most of the ASCII-based SignalShark SCPI commands to Python methods that also handle parsing and data type conversion.


The available commands are divided into groups for a better overview.

The field ‘scpi’ provides access to the different SCPI command groups and supports some additional helper functions:

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# Sends the SCPI command 'DISPlay:UNIT?' from the SCPI group display.
self.signalshark.scpi.display.get_unit()

# Helper function to check SCPI error queue.
self.signalshark.scpi.check_error()

For a detailed description of the field 'self.signalshark.scpi' see:

The following list shows all SignalShark SCPI command groups supported by this API. Click on a command group to see information about the supported SCPI commands and the associated parameters and return values.

You can also use the search page to find information about a specific SCPI command:

Special Data Types

Some SCPI commands generate a large list of return parameters that would make them very difficult to handle.
The module datatypes.py contains some classes that encapsulate these parameters and are used as method parameters or return values in the corresponding SCPI commands.
The module ant_data.py contains some classes that encapsulate parameters for the sense antenna commands.
The module cbl_data.py contains some classes that encapsulate parameters for the sense cable commands.
Many commands have string based enum parameters to specify a certain behaviour. The SCPI command ‘SPECtrum:TRACe:ENABle’ for example has an enum parameter ‘trace’ with the possible values All, RMS, PPk, MPk, Avg, Smp, MnR, AvR, MxR, MxP, MnP, MxA, MxS that defines the spectrum trace to enable/disable.
The module enums.py contains enum-classes for the different SCPI commands with all possible values.