Python – pylibftdi missing libftdi libusb on Windows install

ftdipythonpyusbserial-port

I am trying to write a python bit-banging application to communicate with a FT232H eeprom using pylibftdi (over serial port).

I have installed the FT232H .dll using the installer provided by ftdichip (the default .dll install location is 'C:\Windows\System32\drivers'); but pylibftdi can not find libftdi or libusb.

An example of a pylibftdi base install on Windows would be greatly appreciated.

Note 1: I am aware of pyUSB, but this does not support Python 2.7.

Note 2: Under Linux (Ubuntu/Mint) the dependencies are installed as follows:

sudo apt-get install libftdi1
pip install pyusb

I need the equivalent for Windows 7.

Best Answer

First install the USB driver as described here http://embedded-funk.net/running-libftdi-under-windows/

For me this meant using Zadig.exe (http://zadig.akeo.ie/) to replace the FT232R USB UART driver with libusbK driver. (Remember to click options->List all devices in Zadig)

Second download libftdi. From https://sourceforge.net/projects/picusb/files/ I downloaded https://sourceforge.net/projects/picusb/files/libftdi1-1.1_devkit_x86_x64_21Feb2014.zip/download

Locate your Python installation.For me that was c:\Anaconda3.

From libftdi1-1.1_devkit_x86_x64_21Feb2014.zip:

copy bin64\libusb-1.0.dll c:\Anaconda3\
copy bin64\libftdi1.dll c:\Anaconda3\
copy lib64\site-packages\* c:\Anaconda3\Lib\site-packages\

Test:

python -m pylibftdi.examples.list_devices

Python 2.7.9+ and 3.4+

Good news! Python 3.4 (released March 2014) and Python 2.7.9 (released December 2014) ship with Pip. This is the best feature of any Python release. It makes the community's wealth of libraries accessible to everyone. Newbies are no longer excluded from using community libraries by the prohibitive difficulty of setup. In shipping with a package manager, Python joins Ruby, Node.js, Haskell, Perl, Go—almost every other contemporary language with a majority open-source community. Thank you, Python.

If you do find that pip is not available when using Python 3.4+ or Python 2.7.9+, simply execute e.g.:

py -3 -m ensurepip

Of course, that doesn't mean Python packaging is problem solved. The experience remains frustrating. I discuss this in the Stack Overflow question Does Python have a package/module management system?.

And, alas for everyone using Python 2.7.8 or earlier (a sizable portion of the community). There's no plan to ship Pip to you. Manual instructions follow.

Python 2 ≤ 2.7.8 and Python 3 ≤ 3.3

Flying in the face of its 'batteries included' motto, Python ships without a package manager. To make matters worse, Pip was—until recently—ironically difficult to install.

Official instructions

Per https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/installing/#do-i-need-to-install-pip:

Download get-pip.py, being careful to save it as a .py file rather than .txt. Then, run it from the command prompt:

python get-pip.py

You possibly need an administrator command prompt to do this. Follow Start a Command Prompt as an Administrator (Microsoft TechNet).

This installs the pip package, which (in Windows) contains ...\Scripts\pip.exe that path must be in PATH environment variable to use pip from the command line (see the second part of 'Alternative Instructions' for adding it to your PATH,

Alternative instructions

The official documentation tells users to install Pip and each of its dependencies from source. That's tedious for the experienced and prohibitively difficult for newbies.

For our sake, Christoph Gohlke prepares Windows installers (.msi) for popular Python packages. He builds installers for all Python versions, both 32 and 64 bit. You need to:

For me, this installed Pip at C:\Python27\Scripts\pip.exe. Find pip.exe on your computer, then add its folder (for example, C:\Python27\Scripts) to your path (Start / Edit environment variables). Now you should be able to run pip from the command line. Try installing a package:

pip install httpie

There you go (hopefully)! Solutions for common problems are given below:

Proxy problems

If you work in an office, you might be behind an HTTP proxy. If so, set the environment variables http_proxy and https_proxy. Most Python applications (and other free software) respect these. Example syntax:

http://proxy_url:port
http://username:password@proxy_url:port

If you're really unlucky, your proxy might be a Microsoft NTLM proxy. Free software can't cope. The only solution is to install a free software friendly proxy that forwards to the nasty proxy. http://cntlm.sourceforge.net/

Unable to find vcvarsall.bat

Python modules can be partly written in C or C++. Pip tries to compile from source. If you don't have a C/C++ compiler installed and configured, you'll see this cryptic error message.

Error: Unable to find vcvarsall.bat

You can fix that by installing a C++ compiler such as MinGW or Visual C++. Microsoft actually ships one specifically for use with Python. Or try Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler for Python 2.7.

Often though it's easier to check Christoph's site for your package.

Python – How to manually install a pypi module without pip/easy_install

Download the package
unzip it if it is zipped
cd into the directory containing setup.py
If there are any installation instructions contained in documentation contianed herein, read and follow the instructions OTHERWISE
type in python setup.py install

You may need administrator privileges for step 5. What you do here thus depends on your operating system. For example in Ubuntu you would say sudo python setup.py install

EDIT- thanks to kwatford (see first comment)

To bypass the need for administrator privileges during step 5 above you may be able to make use of the --user flag. In this way you can install the package only for the current user.

The docs say:

Files will be installed into subdirectories of site.USER_BASE (written as userbase hereafter). This scheme installs pure Python modules and extension modules in the same location (also known as site.USER_SITE). Here are the values for UNIX, including Mac OS X:

More details can be found here: http://docs.python.org/2.7/install/index.html