GUI for python app that uses interactive broker API that will eventually run on EC2

Question

I have an Interactive Brokers [IB] account and am using the IB API to make an automated trading system in python. Version 1.0 is nearing the test stage.

I am thinking about creating a GUI for it so that I can real-time watch various custom indicators and adjust trading parameters. It is all (IB TWS/IB Gateway and my app) running on my local windows 10 pc (I could run it on Ubuntu if that made it easier) with startup config files presently being the only way to adjust parameter and then watch the results scroll by on the console window.

Eventually I would like to run both IB TWS/IB Gateway and the app on Amazon EC2/AWS and access it from anywhere. I only mention this as may be a consideration on how to setup the GUI now to avoid having to redo it then.

I am not going to write this myself and will contract someone else to do it. After spending 30+ hrs researching this I still really have no idea on what the best way would be to implement this (browser based, standalone app, etc.) and/or what skills the programmer would need for me to describe the job.

An estimate on how long it would take to get a bare bones GUI real-time displaying data from my app and real-time sending inputs back to my app would be additionally helpful.

Answer 1

The simplest and quickest way will probably be to add GUI directly to your Python App. If you don't need it to be pretty or to run on mobile, I'd say go with TKinter for simplicity. Then, connect to wherever the App is located and control it remotely.

Adding another component that will communicate with your Python App introduces a higher level of complexity which I think is redundant in this case.

You didn't specify in details what kind of data you will require the app to display. If this includes any form of charting, I'd use an existing charting software such as Ninjatrader / Multicharts / Sierracharts to run my indicators and see the positions status, and restrict the GUI of the python app to adjusting the trading parameters and reporting numerical stats.