plasduino – open source data acquisition

GNU/Linux

If you're running GNU/Linux, the easiest way to install plasduino is using the precompiled packages that we make available on the download page in the rpm and deb flavors. If you're using a Debian or red-hat based system you should be all set (and the dependencies should be take care of, with one notable exception mentioned below). Just download the package in your favourite location, open a terminal and issue the command (we are assuming that you know how to specify the path to the precompiled package):

sudo rpm -Uvh /path/to/plasduino-x.x.x-fc.noarch.rpm

for rpm-based distributions (e.g., Fedora or RedHat) or

sudo dpkg -i /path/to/plasduino_x.x.x_all.deb

for debian-based distributions (e.g., Debian or Fedora). For modern distributions you might even get away with a mouse click!

In addition to that you have to add yourself to the dialout group to be able to write to the serial port. In order to do that open a terminal and follow this instructions. If you don't know what your username is type:

whoami

Then do:

sudo usermod -a -G dialout your_username

Finally, log out and log in again. If you type in a terminal

groups

dialot should show up (and you should be good to go).

Mind that if you're using Fedora you do need to enable the rpmfusion repository to have access to ffmpeg, which in turn is required by the Video Click module. Not every Fedora user being willing to enable rpmfusion (and, who knows? Maybe you don't care about this specific module to start with), we decided not to include ffmpeg in the list of dependencies in the rpm. You'll have to enable the repository by yourself, open a terminal and issue:

sudo yum install ffmpeg

(or use yumex or your favourite graphical package manager).

If, for some reason, you want to install plasduino from the source code, you can surely do that using distutils. Download the compressed platform-independent tarball, uncompress it, change directory in the top-level folder and type (as root):

python setup.py install
./modules/plasduino_updatemoduelinfo.py

(the last line generates an installation-dependent configuration file to be used at runtime and needs to be executed only once with root priviledges).

If you have problems in the installation, ideas to make this page more useful or requests to support other distros, we would love to hear from you on our issue tracker or by e-mail. And if you are willing to volunteer for any of the above, that's even better!