Installation - adammhaile/ae45LhX89i GitHub Wiki

Complete this page once files have been submitted to GitHub/PyPi.

With either installation method, it is recommended (but not necessary) to use virtualenv to isolate the installation.

Easy Installation

The easiest way to acquire BiblioPixel is using pip. If you don't already have pip the easiest way is to download and run get-pip.py. Then install BiblioPixel as follows:

pip install BiblioPixel

This will automatically install the entire package and make it available to import from anywhere in python. However, this will not get you any example or testing scripts. Download from GitHub to obtain all the extras.

Manual Installation

Download the source package from GitHub and unzip the contents. Inside of the package directory run the command:

python setup.py install

BiblioPixel should now be available to import in your python script.

The source package also includes the following example/test scripts in the root directory:

  • matrix_setup.py - For the Display Setup process with a matrix display.
  • strip_setup.py - For the Display Setup process with a strip display.
  • matrix_example.py - Some examples for matrix displays.
  • strip_example.py - Some examples for strip displays.
  • network_receiver_example.py - Example network receiver.
  • network_sender_example.py - Example network sender.
  • matrix_animations.py - A selection of animations for matrix displays.
  • strip_animations.py - A selection of animations for strip displays.

Requirements

While not absolutely needed for all scenarios, the following packages may be required:

  • pillow - Used for the image and DriverImageSequence modules.
  • py-spidev - Used for DriverSPIBase, DriverLPD8806, and DriverWS2801. Provides direct SPI port access on the Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black, and similar. Not absolutely required but increases performance. Will not install on Windows or Mac OS! There is no SPI port available on such systems.
  • pyserial - Used for DriverSerial to access serial (COM) ports.

These packages can be installed via:

pip install pillow
pip install spidev
pip install pyserial

Or, to install everything at once, from the BiblioPixel package directory run:

pip install -r requirements.txt

On Windows, pillow may require some advanced development tools to be installed. If you are having trouble installing, try these pre-compiled binaries.

If running the above command under Windows or Mac OS, the spidev installation will fail. This is okay, as there are no SPI ports on such systems anyways.

tkinter

DriverVisualizer requires tkinter which is pre-installed with python in most situations, but does not come pre-installed on some versions of Linux. If you see the error:

ImportError: No module named _tkinter, please install the python-tk package

install tkinter with the following command:

sudo apt-get install python-tk