calibcant: tools for thermally calibrating AFM cantilevers

Calculates the spring constant `k` of a cantilever using the
equipartition theorem:

  1/2 k_B T = 1/2 K x^2

The analysis uses the expected power spectral density (PSD) of a
damped simple harmonic oscillator to filter out noise from the
measured PSD.


Installation
============

Packages
--------

Gentoo
~~~~~~

I've packaged calibcant for Gentoo.  You need layman_ and my `wtk
overlay`_.  Install with::

    # emerge -av app-portage/layman
    # layman --add wtk
    # emerge -av sci-physics/calibcant

Dependencies
------------

If you're installing by hand or packaging calibcant for another
distribution, you'll need the following dependencies:

===========  =================  ============================
Package      Debian_            Gentoo_
===========  =================  ============================
Numpy_       python-numpy       dev-python/numpy
Scipy_       python-scipy       sci-libs/scipy
H5config_                       dev-python/h5config [#wtk]_
H5Py_        python-h5py        dev-python/h5py
Matplotlib_  python-matplotlib  dev-python/matplotlib
Nose_        python-nose        dev-python/nose
FFT_tools_                      dev-python/FFT-tools [#wtk]_
Pypiezo_                        sci-libs/pypiezo [#wtk]_
===========  =================  ============================

.. [#wtk] In the `wtk overlay`_.

You'll also need my pyafm_ and stepper_ packages, or suitable
replacements.

Installing by hand
------------------

Calibcant is available as a Git_ repository::

    $ git clone git://tremily.us/calibcant.git

See the homepage_ for details.  To install the checkout, run the
standard::

    $ python setup.py install


Usage
=====

See the module docstrings for simple examples.


Testing
=======

Run internal unit tests with::

    $ nosetests --with-doctest --doctest-tests calibcant


Licence
=======

This project is distributed under the `GNU General Public License
Version 3`_ or greater.


Author
======

W. Trevor King
wking@tremily.us
Copyright 2007-2012


.. _layman: http://layman.sourceforge.net/
.. _wtk overlay: http://blog.tremily.us/posts/Gentoo_overlay/
.. _Debian: http://www.debian.org/
.. _Gentoo: http://www.gentoo.org/
.. _NumPy: http://numpy.scipy.org/
.. _SciPy: http://www.scipy.org/
.. _H5config: http://blog.tremily.us/posts/h5config/
.. _H5Py: http://code.google.com/p/h5py/
.. _Matplotlib: http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/
.. _Nose: http://somethingaboutorange.com/mrl/projects/nose/
.. _FFT_tools: http://blog.tremily.us/posts/FFT-tools/
.. _Pypiezo: http://blog.tremily.us/posts/pypiezo/
.. _pyafm: http://blog.tremily.us/posts/pyafm/
.. _stepper: http://blog.tremily.us/posts/stepper/
.. _Git: http://git-scm.com/
.. _homepage: http://blog.tremily.us/posts/calibcant/
.. _GNU General Public License Version 3: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt
