InstallationΒΆ
Currently in this alpha release, the the best supported configuration OS X, though those experienced with Linux should also be able to get going by tweaking these directions. Both Linux and Win32 platforms will be fully supported in the future.
If you are at all experienced with Python development, you should use the virtualenv model of segregating your Python environments. If you’re only plans are to install and experiment with this software, it is reasonable to just install onto your base system.
On OS X, ensure that your environment has a couple tools in place:
- The latest xcode from Apple (free in app store) or Developer tools CLI install (requires Apple developer ID)
- Homebrew
- git (for getting latest development version) brew install git
- portmidi for midi control brew install portmidi
These are my recommended steps for getting your Python environment setup - you will need your password to install some tools globally (type them into terminal):
cd /tmp
curl -O http://python-distribute.org/distribute_setup.py
sudo python distribute_setup.py
curl -O https://raw.github.com/pypa/pip/master/contrib/get-pip.py
sudo python get-pip.py
sudo pip install -U virtualenv
sudo pip install -U virtualenvwrapper
To finish the installation of the virtualenv wrapper tool, you will need to modify your shell environment. Open you .bash_profile file:
touch ~/.bash_profile
open -a textedit ~/.bash_profile
add these three lines to your .bashrc file in the root of your home folder.:
export PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:$PATH
export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs
export PROJECT_HOME=$HOME/Devel
source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
Now you need to make a Python virtualenvironment to execute the BirdFish code:
mkvirtualenv birdfish
pip install -e git+https://github.com/ptone/BirdFish.git#egg=birdfish-dev
pip install -e git+https://github.com/ptone/protomidi.git#egg=protomidi-dev
pip install -e git+https://github.com/ptone/Lumos.git#egg=lumos-dev
pip install -e git+https://github.com/ptone/pyosc.git#egg=pyOSC-dev
BirdFish is the main control software package, protomidi is the Python bindings to the PortMidi library which makes your system’s Midi infrastructure available, and Lumos is a library for sending E1.31. pyOSC is a Python implementation of the OSC command protocol.
Download a small virtual midi keyboard called MidiKeys
If you want to use DMX USB hardware and not just E1.31 - you will need to install OLA, more information can be found on its home page. You need to make sure that the Python bindings are part of the binary - last I checked, this was not the case, so you need to build from source.
Anytime you want to execute you need to “activate” the BirdFish Python environment in a terminal session. Just type:
workon birdfish
You should then see (birdfish) in your shell prompt.
To open the examples (note you need Midikeys open):
cdvirtualenv
cd birdfish/examples
python <example name>
To update to the latest development version of BirdFish:
cdvirtualenv
cd birdfish
git pull