labManager-client 1.0.5

labManager v1.0.5

System for managing multi-station multi-tenant lab setups - client

This package is part of the labManager tools, a collection of tools for managing behavioral research setups. Please see here for more information.

Installation

pip install labManager-client
# or
pip install labManager-client[eye-tracker] # ①

1. use the eye-tracker extra to enable support for reporting the status of Tobii Pro eye trackers to the labManager-master tool.

Example script

An example script for running the labManager client script is provided here.

Configuration

The below shows the schema used for parsing the configuration file for labManager client, using StrictYAML’s notation. An example configuration file is also available.

'network': s.Str(),                         # Network on which to discover clients, e.g. 10.0.1.0/24
'network_retry': s.Map({                    # Configuration for retrying to get network connection on startup.
                                            # Useful whenit may take some time for the network connection to
                                            # come up after the computer station starts
    'number_tries': s.Int(),                # Number of times to try
    'wait': s.Int(),                        # Wait duration (s) between tries
}),

'service_discovery_protocol':               # Protocol to use for client discovery, MDNS or SSDP
    s.Enum(['MDNS','SSDP']),

s.Optional('MDNS'): s.Map({
    'service': s.Str(),                     # Service name to discover when using MDNS, e.g.,
}),                                         # _master._labManager._tcp.local.

s.Optional('SSDP'): s.Map({
    'device_type': s.Str(),                 # Device type to announce and listen for when using SSDP, e.g.,
}),                                         # urn:schemas-upnp-org:device:labManager

Standalone deployment

One simple way to make a standalone install of the app is to download WinPython, e.g. the latest 3.10.x version. I think this is recommended instead of using a system-wide or user installation of Python, so that users of the computer are unlikely to accidentally interfere with the Python distribution that runs the management tools.

Do as follows:

1. Download the dot version, not the full package, e.g. Winpython64-3.10.11.1dot.
2. Run the downloaded exe, which unzips the WinPython files.
3. Take the python folder from the unzipped files (e.g. python-3.10.11.amd64), you do not need the rest. This is your python distribution. Put it where you want on the disk.
4. Open a command prompt in the root of the Python installation. Install the wanted labManager packages into it using, e.g., .\python.exe -m pip install labManager-client.
5. Finally use the python.exe in the folder to execute your script, such the example script to launch this tool.

Acknowledgements

This project was made possible by funding from the LMK foundation, Sweden.