'### Not a public function
Does the threaded work of collecting the data and storing it
in an attribute of the class.'

def collectdatawhile_slave(self, period):

    tempresults = []
    try:
        self.open()
        while self.collectdatawhile_active:
            tempresults.append(self.collectdata())
            time.sleep(period)
        self.curresults = tempresults
    finally:
        self.close()
