Optional Software installation¶
This page contains miscellaneous software that is not essential, but that you may want to install sometime later when you need it.
Pololu USB AVR Programmer v2¶
This utility is for changing the settings of a hardware programmer device.
Download and install the Pololu USB AVR Programmer v2 for your operating system here. If you’re using the older programmer, this might not work.
Python and Pyserial¶
These are needed to run the test harness, our automated software testing framework.
We are only supporting Python 3 with the test harness, not Python 2. Open your command line and type $ python -V to check the version.
If you don’t have Python at all or need Python 3, download it from here. Get the latest version (v3.7.1 as of Nov. 28, 2018) and install it.
If you are on macOS, make sure to follow the instructions on the last page of the installer to install certificates.
If you are on Windows, make sure to check the box called “Add Python 3.7 to PATH”.
Run $ python -V to check that you have Python 3. If you are on macOS, it probably distinguishes the versions using python for Python 2 and python3 for Python 3. You can try running $ python3 -V to see what happens. If that works, use python3 instead of python from now on so that you use Python 3.
Now you will need to install the Pyserial library, which the test harness requires to interface with serial ports. We will do this using the pip package manager.
$ pip install pyserial
If you are on macOS, you might need to use pip3 instead of pip.
If this doesn’t work, you might need to follow the instructions in the terminal to upgrade the version of pip on your computer.
Please ask for help if you encounter any problems.