2. Install the software#

The next step is to install the software.

The BrachioGraph library requires a few additional components. It needs to be run in a Python 3 environment, using Python 3.6 or later.

2.1. Install system packages#

You may have some of these installed already, but that shouldn’t matter. The packages include:

  • venv, for managing virtual environments under Python 3

  • PIGPIO, an excellent library that provides hardware control of the Pi’s GPIO pins - important for accurate timing of pulses. It comes with a Python interface to the lower-level code.

  • various system libraries required by the Pillow Python imaging library

  • libatlas3-base and libgfortran5, required by the Numpy Python mathematics library

  • python3-tk, for the Turtle graphics integration

  • Git

Select the steps for installation using Ubuntu or Raspberry PiOS appropriately below.

Run:

sudo apt install -y python3-venv python3-tk libjbig0 libjpeg-dev liblcms2-2 libopenjp2-7 libtiff5 libwebpdemux2 libwebpmux3 libzstd1 libatlas3-base libgfortran5 git python3.10-venv python3-dev unzip make build-essential python3-pip

The PIGPIO library is not available via apt on Ubuntu, so it needs to be installed with make, which we’ll do in a temporary workspace:

cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/joan2937/pigpio/archive/master.zip
unzip master.zip
cd pigpio-master
make
sudo make install
cd

Run:

sudo apt install -y python3-venv python3-tk pigpiod libjbig0 libjpeg-dev liblcms2-2 libopenjp2-7 libtiff5 libwebp6 libwebpdemux2 libwebpmux3 libzstd1 libatlas3-base libgfortran5 git

2.2. Set up a virtual environment#

Create and activate a Python virtual environment to work in:

python3 -m venv env
source env/bin/activate

The environment needs to be active whenever you are using the plotter. You can tell when the virtual environment is active from the bash prompt:

(env) pi@raspberrypi:~ $

If you need to reactivate the environment, run source env/bin/activate once again, in this directory,

2.3. Clone the BrachioGraph repository#

Use Git to clone the BrachioGraph repository from https://github.com/evildmp/brachiograph:

git clone https://github.com/evildmp/BrachioGraph.git

Or, if you have already set up a public key using ssh-keygen and added your public key to your GitHub account you can use SSH instead:

git clone git@github.com:evildmp/BrachioGraph.git

2.4. Install Python packages#

Pinned versions of the Python packages are listed in requirements.txt in the BrachioGraph directory. Install them by running:

cd BrachioGraph
pip install -r requirements.txt

This will install:

  • Numpy, a Python mathematics library

  • PIGPIO’s Python library

  • Pillow, the most widely-used Python imaging library.

  • tqdm, for the progress indicator while drawing

  • readchar, to allow the BrachioGraph.drive() methods to accept user input

  • pytest, to run the test suite

You only need to install them once in your virtual environment. Next time you activate the virtual environment, you’ll find that they’re still there.