computer-setup.md

Setting up a computer

These instructions are for setting up a lab computer (OS X) to run one of my experiments. To set up a computer to run one of my experiments, start at the top with install required software. To adapt one of my experiments for your own use, skip install required software and start with get Miniconda.

• Install required software
• Get Miniconda
• Get PsychoPy and required packages

Install required software

Check to make sure the computer you are using has (at least) Audacity and Dropbox. Make sure Dropbox has been configured with the lab login information (ask Jaclyn for this information if you need it). If the computer is missing either of these programs, please download them.

• Audacity - download and install
• Dropbox - download and install (and configure with lab login)

Get Miniconda

Miniconda is Anaconda’s minimalist python distribution. I prefer it to full Anaconda because it is much smaller and it doesn’t come with so many unnecessary packages (that I never use).

First, check to make sure miniconda is not already installed

conda info

If you get information about the current conda install, you can skip to Get PsychoPy & required packages. If you get a notice -bash: conda: command not found, then proceed with installing miniconda.

Download latest distribution of miniconda for OSX (64-bit is the only option)

curl -O https://repo.continuum.io/miniconda/Miniconda2-latest-MacOSX-x86_64.sh  

and install it

bash Miniconda2-latest-MacOSX-x86_64.sh  

You'll be asked a few questions. You want to answer 'yes' to all of them, and press Enter whenever it prompts you to.

To start using miniconda, close and then reopen the terminal. Check that miniconda is installed

conda info

And make sure miniconda has added itself to your path to become your default python.

which python

Now make sure everything is up to date

conda update conda

Great! Now you can start using conda. You can check what packages are already installed with

conda list

And you can see what environments you have with

conda env list

For more information on how to use conda, refer to the official conda documentation.

Get PsychoPy and required packages

Get dependencies first

In order for my experiments to play sound, you need to install pygame and the packages it requires. To do this, we first want to get the packages pygame requires. Install homebrew to get these packages (because it does a nice job of getting the right versions of everything).

Make sure you have xcode-select installed

xcode-select –install

Then install homebrew

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

and install the pygame dependencies with it

brew install sdl sdl_ttf sdl_image sdl_mixer portmidi

PsychoPy

Now that you have miniconda and the pygame dependencies, you can create a conda environment for psychopy. You can get exact conda environment that I use for my experiments by using my environment file. Please note this will only work with 64-bit OSX.

Download the file

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kschuler/helpers/master/kschuler-env.txt

And use it to create a conda environment for my experiments

conda install --name kschuler --file kschuler-env.txt

This will install almost all the packages required by psychopy (and my experiments). Answer yes to all the questions and press enter when required. It will take a long time.

Pyglet

The last package to install is pyglet (used for presenting visual stimuli). To make sure we get the right version, we want to do this after we have created our conda environment for pyglet. Navigate into the environment you created above.

source activate kschuler

and use pip to install pyglet

pip install pyglet

You should be all set to run my experiments on your computer. If you would like to analyze data on the computer you are setting up, go to analyzing data guide for necessary software. To see the complete list of added software that I install on my personal computer, go to my software list.