Installation

The whole architecture consists of three different software packages. The most basic one is a C library that communicates with the ADwin device. To make it available in Python there is a wrapper package adwin that is available via pip.

To bring the whole package to work, make sure, you have a python3 installation with the package manager pip.

Then, you can install

  • this nqontrol package

  • and the ADwin library.

Install NQontrol

The Sources

Here you can get the newest stable version: gitlab repository

Install the ADwin Library

On Linux

The ADwin connects via a fixed LAN connection, which has to be configured first.
The library archive contains a documentation file which provides more details. Download the library from the ADwin file server: adwin-lib-5.0.12

Compile and install the software:

./configure
make
sudo make install

Configure the network of the ADwin device (if not done, yet):

adconfig config <MAC address> IP 192.168.0.2 MASK 255.255.255.0

Next, connect the ADwin device using (change IP according to the one you assigned to your connection):

sudo /opt/adwin/sbin/adconfig add 1 UID username TYPE net IP 192.168.0.2

The 1 refers to the Device Number. For more information or in case this solution does no work for you, use:

man /opt/adwin/share/man/man8/adconfig.8

ADwin doesn’t set the PATH variable. If you want to have nicer commands without the full path you have to do it by yourself.

export PATH=$PATH:/opt/adwin/sbin
export MANPATH=$MANPATH:/opt/adwin/share/man

You can also add the commands to config files like .profile, .zshenv, etc…

Windows

Generally, this package is not fully tested on Windows as of this moment. However, here’s a few best practices to at least reduce errors:

  • Gunicorn will not run on windows, since it is UNIX based. Thus, there is a Flask fallback in the gunirun.py file.

  • First of all, make sure you’ve got python v3 correctly set up and on your path (we use the newest version). We do not use anaconda, so we recommend using pip.

  • Use pipenv with pip to set up the app in a local environment. The installation guide for windows can be found here: https://pipenv-fork.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install.html#installing-pipenv.

  • Remove gunicorn in the Pipfile requirements!

  • You will need the C++ build packages on Windows or you will get an error: Microsoft Visual C++ 14.0 is required. Get it with “Build Tools for Visual Studio”: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/ (Scroll down to “Tools for Visual Studio” and make sure you only get the Build Tools. Microsoft will ask you to download the full suite multiple times…)

  • Run everything from a pipenv shell

If you manage to set everything up, please report any bugs, fix requests etc. to us on (https://gitlab.com/las-nq/nqontrol)! Maybe even write a description. :)