Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
123 lines (89 loc) · 5.09 KB

WINDOWS_INSTALL.md

File metadata and controls

123 lines (89 loc) · 5.09 KB
Raw

Installing on Windows

I write this, because of some e-mails I received from Windows users:

  • If you contact me, be nice!
  • I do not run Windows.
  • I am not an oceanoptics employee and do this in my free time.
  • I have confirmation of several people that run python-seabreeze on Windows XP, Windows 7 and Windows 8. I do not know of people who run this on Windows 10.
  • If you run into problems while trying to install this module, it is most likely that the issues are on your side. Please, please, please spend some time using google to find solutions.
  • And if you manage to get it up and running, and you think that the install instructions here are bad, send me better ones.

Okay, I really need to emphasize, that using Anaconda is the recommended way to install this module. But ok:

Backends

On windows you can't easily run both backends side by side, because you have to switch drivers when switching backends. So choose now.

Installing requirements for cseabreeze backend on Windows

I am not sure if this will work.

  1. Download the seabreeze installer from sourceforge for your architecture here.
  2. Run the downloaded file and install the library.

When you connect your spectrometer you have to use the driver files that come with this installer. So you have to decide to either use seabreeze OR OmniDriver. Since you want to use python-seabreeze you have to go for the seebreeze drivers, which means OceanView is most likely to stop working for you.

python-seabreeze versions now try to be locked to one SeaBreeze.dll version. This means, that if you run into issues, I would try downloading the latest libseabreeze-x.x.x.x-ARCH-VSVER.zip where ARCH should be your computer architecture (32, or 64) and VSVER should be vc9 if you use python2.7 and vc14 if you use python 3.x. After downloading overwrite the dll and lib files that the installer copied to your machine with the ones provided in the zip file. (Also let me know if this worked for you or not)

(OPTIONAL) Installing requirements for pyseabreeze backend on Windows

You need to get pyUSB up and running. As soon as pyUSB is working on your machine and you are using a libusb driver for your spectrometer the pyseabreeze backend will work (I am going to asume that you use libusb. Other pyUSB-supported implementations should work too).

I will only help you, if you can run the following in your python interpreter and it does not raise any exception:

import usb.core
usb.core.find()

If it does raise an exception, you did not install pyUSB correctly. Please use google to find a pyUSB installation guide that works. If you have one, let me know, and I'll add it here for other Windows users.

When you connect your spectrometer you have to use the driver files that come with libusb. So you have to decide to either use pyseabreeze OR OmniDriver. Since you want to use python-seabreeze you have to go for the libusb drivers, which means OceanView is most likely to stop working for you.

python-seabreeze

  1. Install AND/OR upgrade pip. Do not file any issues if pip --version returns less than version 8.x.x!
  2. Download the correct wheel from the releases page. You need to choose the wheel matching you python version (i.e. Python2.7.3 == cp27) and your python interpreter architecture (i.e. 64bit python == win_amd64)

Then you can just run:

pip install NAME-OF-THE-PYTHON-WHEEL-I-JUST-DOWNLOADED.whl

You made it. Congratulations.

Common problems

I can't import seabreeze

So most likely you want to use cseabreeze and the import fails because the python-seabreeze cseabreeze wrapper can't be imported. If you run:

import seabreeze.cseabreeze

it raises an exception. The most common cause why this happens because SeaBreeze.dll can't be found. If you used any of the UNOFFICIAL seabreeze installers, get rid of them. Also get rid of every SeaBreeze.dll you can find on your computer (seriously). And then follow the install instructions above. If it still doesn't work, try adding the folder that has the Seabreeze.dll to your %PATH% environment variable. If you have no clue what I am talking about, google the previous sentence and make sure that you do it right. If it still doesn't work try copying the Seabreeze.dll to the same folder that you run your script from (But don't blame me if at some point in time something breaks.).

python-seabreeze can't find my spectrometer

It is most likely that you are still using the OmniDriver for your spectrometer. Please switch to the drivers that the seabreeze installer provides. (Or libusb, dependent on what you are using.)

Because (some reason), I want to build the module myself, but can't

Look at the appveyor install scripts. And then you need to figure out what's installed on appveyor virtual machines. I would not be able to help you setup your environment. As I said I am not a windows user.