Installation and Getting Started

Installing Epics Apps

The latest version of the epicsapps package is 2025.1.5. For existing Python installations, this can be installed with:

pip install epicsapps

or upgraded with:

pip install --upgrade epicsapps

For installation into an existing Python environment,

This pip command will all the required packages needed on Windows and macOS.

On Linux, however, the pip install command will not have a binary package for wxPython, and may try to build wxPython from source. This requires a large number of development packages on Linux, and rarely works without some effort.

There are conda packages for wxPython from the conda-forge channel. Since using Anaconda Python provides many othed common scientific pacakges, and is common at many facilities using Epics. If using Anaconda Python, you can first do:

conda install -c conda-forge wxpython

and then:

pip install epicsapps

This approach will work on all systems, and is recommended on Linux.

Installation Scripts

Table of EpicsApps Install scripts

Operating System

Installer Script

Windows

GetEpicsApps.bat

macOS or Linux

GetEpicsApps.sh

To install a full standalone installation of Python with EpicsApps, download GetEpicsApps.bat for Windows or GetEpicsApps.sh for Linux and MacOS and run that script. This will install a full Anaconda Python environment in a folder named C:\Users\<YourName>\epicsapps or C:\Users\<YourName>\AppData\Local\epicsapps on Windows or in a folder called epicsapps in you Home Folder on Linux or macOS, and will also put folder called Epics Apps on your desktop with links to the GUI Applications.

Getting Started

Installing the epicsapps package will install a command-line script epicsapps that can be used to launch the main epicsapps GUI applications. This works as:

epicsapps [options] appname  [filename]

where options can be

  • -h, –help: show this help message and exit

  • -m, –makeicons create desktop and start menu icons

  • -p, –prompt prompt for configuration on startup

  • -n, –no-prompt suppress prompt, use default configuration

  • -c, –cli run as a command-line program.

and appname can be one of

  • stripchart PV Stripchart

  • adviewer [filename] Area Detector Viewer

  • instruments [filename] Epics Instruments

  • pvlogger [filename] PV Logger data collection

  • pvlogview PV Logger data Viewer

  • microscope [filename] Sample Microscope Viewer

and filename is an optional configuration YAML file.

Creating Desktop Shortcuts

Running:

epicsapps -m

will create a folder called “Epics Apps” on your desktop with links to launch the main GUI applications.