Welcome to HSL’s documentation!

HSL (Hamilton Standard Language) is the backend that Venus compiles to, and is used to control Hamilton liquid handling robots such as the Microlab STAR. Whilst HSL can be used to write methods directly, this functionality is rarely used, instead it is primarily used to write supporting libraries which can then be used directly within Venus.

There are very few available resources for HSL, but hopefully this documentation can serve as a good starting point for people wanting to learn it.

Note

This project is under active development. This resource is also not a Hamilton-provided resource. If any issues are found, or you wish to contribute, please contact tarunchapman@hotmail.com, or reach out to me on discord (theonetruenerd)

Contents

• HSL Fundamentals
  • Conventions
• Writing a Library
  • HSL Library File
  • Full Example Code
• Predefined Constants
• Reserved Keywords
  • Abort
  • Break
  • Char
  • Const
  • Device
  • Debug
  • Define
  • Dialog
  • Echo
  • Else
  • Endif
  • Error
  • Event
  • File
  • Float
  • For
  • Function
  • Global
  • GoTo
  • If
  • Ifdef
  • Ifndef
  • Include
  • Lock
  • Long
  • Loop
  • Method
  • Namespace
  • Next
  • Object
  • Once
  • Onerror
  • Pause
  • Pragma
  • Private
  • Return
  • Resume
  • Sequence
  • Short
  • Static
  • Struct
  • String
  • Synchronized
  • Timer
  • Unlock
  • Variable
  • Void
  • While
  • “__filename__”