[niklashoelter]

Builds on #1584 (declared_configuration_json): its commit shows here until that one is merged; the new commit is the last one.

The Problem

As requested in #1574: automated protocols with a VANTAstar could not run without the reader. The CLARIOstar has a simulator for this; the VANTAstar did not.

PR Content

VANTAstar(simulation=True), built as the CLARIOstar's simulator:

• VANTAstarSimulationDriver: nothing reaches a wire. The configuration comes from declared_configuration_json, by default the tested reader's recording (RECORDING_VANTASTAR). Status comes from the simulated state; the drawer, the shaker and the temperature controller act at once (without a target there is no temperature, as on the CLARIOstar).
• Absorbance (endpoint, spectra), fluorescence (endpoint, one to five channels) and luminescence reads check their arguments with the same code as a reader's read, refuse with the drawer out, and return random values: optical densities of 0-3.5 (where Voyager caps its exports), fluorescence counts up to 260,000 or 750,000,000 with enhanced dynamic range (the ceilings the reader states in its data). Luminescence stays within the fluorescence ceiling: no luminescence ceiling is known.
• simulated_data: given an earlier result, a simulated read returns its values for the measured wells, checked against the read (wavelengths, optics, wells). A reader's reads take simulated_data too and ignore it.
• Not simulated (NotImplementedError): fluorescence spectra, adjust_gain_and_focus, measure_z_profile, estimate_duration.
• In the driver: the USB link is built in _build_io (the simulator builds none), and each read's check-and-build step is a helper shared with the simulator.
• Guide section, API reference, changelog.

Testing

• Simulator tests: setup from the recording, the device needing a configuration and no link, nothing sent, drawer and plate state, every simulated read with random values and with simulated_data (and the mismatches it refuses), argument checks and the drawer as on a reader, the temperature controller, the shaker, stop with a plate left in, a simulated read in run_cycles, the methods not simulated.
• A reader's read with simulated_data returns what it read.
• The existing VANTAstar tests pass unchanged.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_01GjS7QqcG9eMHsBzAi58Xf3