Install¶

Many of the steps described here require administrator privileges on the PC that you are using.

The code referred to here can be found at the following source repository: https://github.com/palmerlab/behaviour_box. The easiest way to get this code is to follow the link and select the Clone or download button. The recommended way is to install git-svn, (a Windows installer can be found here) and to use the command:

>> git clone https://github.com/palmerlab/behaviour_box

This will allow you to easily stay up to date with any future changes, if you choose.

Arduino¶

To install the Arduino component you will need to have the Arduino IDE which you can get from here. The instructions for how to setup Arduino on Windows can be found here.

Once the Arduino IDE is installed open behaviourbox\behaviourbox.ino in the Arduino editor. With an Arduino plugged in to the USB port you can now upload the code using the compile/run button in the editor. Note the the port that the Arduino is connected to (It’ll be labeled COMx where x is an integer).

Python¶

Note

This system was written using python 2.7 on Windows 7. You can download python from here

Because this is a command line interface it helps to have python available from the system path, in addition you should have the python package manager (pip) for installing the dependencies. To do all that I would recommend following this setup guide.

For those familiar with installing python dependencies on windows the packages and versions used here can be found in requirements.txt.

Go to Christop Gohlke’s Unofficial Windows Binaries for Python Extension Packages page and make sure to follow the instructions there for installing numpy1.

Download additional packages from http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/
- Pandas
- sounddevice
- These smaller packages are also required and can be downloaded from the same site. Use your browsers search to find them, they cannot be linked to
  - Colorama
  - Pyserial

In windows open an elevated command window. To do this find cmd.exe in the start menu, right click and select run as administrator. Now cd to the directory containing the .whl files that you just downloaded. You should then be able to run pip install *.whl to get all the packages.

Requirements¶

Windows 7
Pandas (0.19.0)
Numpy (1.11.2+mkl)
Pyserial (2.7)
Colorama (0.3.7)
sounddevice (0.3.5)
An Arduino running behaviourbox.ino connected to the same computer

1 Follow specific instructions for installing Numpy+mkl. Numpy is a python package which is designed for dealing with numerical arrays quickly. The mkl version is simply a version of the package that has been compiled with the intel math kernel libraries. This makes it a lot faster than the basic version. This system doesn’t necessarily require the speed of the mkl version, but it is a nice thing to have ↩