Installation¶
Requirements¶
roboglia requires Python 3. The CI builds test the package with:
Python 3.6 and 3.7
OS: Linux; distributions Xenial (16.04) and Bionic (18.04)
Architecture: AMD64 and ARM64
This doesn’t mean the package might not work on other OS / Architecture / Python version combinations, but they are not officially supported.
Due to the heavily hardware dependent nature of roboglia some of the
functionality requires lower level modules to communicate with the physical
devices. For example to use Dynamixel devices you need dynamixel_sdk
module, for I2C devices smbus2, for SPI devices spidev, etc. These
packages are not available for all platforms and Python version, so care
must be taken when deciding what platform to use for the robot.
While the package includes these functionalities, we are aware that not all
robots will need to use all these types of devices. For instance, a robot
might use only PWM controlled devices accessed through an I2C multiplexer
like this 16 Channel PWM Bonnet 1 from Adafruit. There is therefore no need
to install dynamixel_sdk or spidev.
With this observation in mind we have decided not to explicitly include hard
dependencies on these low level packages. This means that when you install
roboglia it will not automatically install them for you. It will also
not check if they are available, instead it will be your responsibility to
install the dependencies as you need them, as explained in the next
paragraphs. This is an important point to remember, so here it is emphasized
in a warning:
Warning
roboglia does not automatically install dependent packages
for hardware access. You will have to install them manually as your
robot requires.
Installation procedure¶
You can install roboglia without installing the hardware dependencies, but
when you will use it you must have those dependencies available otherwise
Python will raise an No module exception.
You can install roboglia using pip:
pip install roboglia
This will work well, and is especially recommended, for conda 2 environments. This will install only the main package without hardware package dependencies, but with other dependencies (like PyYAML).
If you want to install a particular version of the package you can specify:
pip install roboglia==X.X.X
If you want to install the latest code from Github, you can clone it and install it from there:
cd /tmp
git clone https://github.com/sonelu/roboglia.git
cd roboglia
[sudo] python setup.py install
The last command might require you to enter the password to allow sudo elevation.
Installing hardware dependencies¶
The installer comes with a number of configurations for extra packages that can be installed as needed.
dynamixel_sdk 3 is released and maintained by ROBOTIS, the maker of the Dynamixel ecosystem. For more details about the package and up to date information and installation instructions visit the DynamixelSDK Manual 4 on ROBOTIS website.
To install dynamixel_sdk when you install roboglia you specify:
pip install roboglia[dynamixel]
Warning
dynamixel_sdk is itself dependent on pyserial and will
attempt to install it. Not all platforms have support for pyserial.
If you plan to use I2C devices in your robot, then you need to install
smbus2:
pip install roboglia[i2c]
Warning
Not all platforms have support for smbus2.
For more details about the package and up to date information and installation instructions visit the smbus2 Github 5 page.
If you plan to use SPI devices in your robot, then you need to install
spidev:
pip install roboglia[spi]
For more details about the package and up to date information and installation instructions visit the spidev Github 6 page.
Warning
Not all platforms have support for spidev.
If you intend to use a combination of hardware you can install them by entering the codes above separated by comas, for instance if you need Dynamixel and I2C you would use:
pip install roboglia[dynamixel,i2c]
Warning
The pip syntax requires there are no blanks between the elements in the square brackets above.
To simplify things, if you need all communication packages, there is an option
all that will install all the extra dependencies:
pip install roboglia[all]
Note
This option will be kept in line with future developments and, if new hardware dependencies will be added, will be updated to include them. So you can be assured that this installation option will install all extra dependencies in addition to the core dependencies.