Setting up MicroDrop development environment

There are several ways to setup the development environment for MicroDrop on your computer.

Option 1 - Install the latest MicroDrop version using the installer

Download the latest version of the installer. This is a good option if you want to develop a plugin.

Option 2 - Download a self extracting .exe

This option allows you to install “portable” MicroDrop so that you can have more than one version on your system.

Option 3- Setup a conda environment:

This option gives you the most flexibility to add/update dependencies, etc. but it is the most work to setup.

1. Install Miniconda 2 (Python 2.7, 32-bit)
2. Clone the microdrop-exe repository.
3. Open a conda terminal and navigate to the directory where you cloned the microdrop-exe project, and run the following commands:

conda env create --file environment.yaml
conda activate microdrop-exe

4. Create a text file at C:\Users\%USERNAME%\Miniconda2\envs\microdrop-exe\.condarc with the following contents:

channels:
  - sci-bots/label/py2exe
  - sci-bots/label/dropbot
  - dropbot
  - sci-bots/label/microdrop-2-plugins
  - sci-bots/label/microdrop-2
  - sci-bots
  - conda-forge
  - defaults

To launch MicroDrop, run the following command:

python -m microdrop

Here’s a log from an IPython session showing how to connect to a DropBot that is plugged in via USB:

In [1]: from dropbot import SerialProxy

In [2]: proxy = SerialProxy()

In [3]: proxy.voltage
Out[3]: 100.0

In [4]: proxy.voltage = 110

In [5]: proxy.state_of_channels
Out[5]:
0      0
1      0
2      0
3      0
4      0
5      0
6      0
7      0
8      0
9      0
10     0
11     0
12     0
13     0
14     0
15     0
16     0
17     0
18     0
19     0
20     0
21     0
22     0
23     0
24     0
25     0
26     0
27     0
28     0
29     0
      ..
90     0
91     0
92     0
93     0
94     0
95     0
96     0
97     0
98     0
99     0
100    0
101    0
102    0
103    0
104    0
105    0
106    0
107    0
108    0
109    0
110    0
111    0
112    0
113    0
114    0
115    0
116    0
117    0
118    0
119    0
Length: 120, dtype: uint8