BlinkStick 0.2.0

Python package to control BlinkStick USB devices.

BlinkStick Python interface to control devices connected to the computer.

What is BlinkStick? Check it out here:

http://www.blinkstick.com

Requirements

• Python

• PyUSB

• webcolors

• grapefruit - package for color manipulations

• pyusb - package to access USB devices

• psutil - only for example-cpu.py

• websocket-client - only for example-connect.py to connect to BlinkStick.com

Installation

Install all required packages with pip:

[sudo] pip install blinkstick

If you would like to run the example scripts, you may also need to install the extra dependencies

[sudo] pip install psutil websocket-client

If websocket-client fails to install, please make sure you run the following command:

sudo apt-get install python-dev

Replace python-dev with python2.7-dev if you are installing on Raspberry Pi.

Description

Description of files:

• blinkstick.py - main BlinkStick class definition

• example-info.py - displays information of each BlinkStick

• example-infoblock.py - read/write info block sample

• example-off.py - turn all blinksticks off

• example-random.py - set random color to all BlinkSticks

• example-cpu.py - displays CPU usage with a BlinkStick (transitions from green as 0% to red as 100%)

• example-connect.py - sample code to connect to BlinkStick.com and control it remotely

Running examples:

python example-info.py

Permission problems

If the script returns with an error

Access denied (insufficient permissions)

You can either run the script with sudo, for example:

sudo python example-info.py

Or you can add a udev rule to allow any user to access the device without root permissions with this single command:

echo "SUBSYSTEM==\"usb\", ATTR{idVendor}==\"20a0\", ATTR{idProduct}==\"41e5\", MODE:=\"0666\"" | sudo tee /etc/udev/rules.d/85-blinkstick.rules

Reboot computer after you have added the command and all users will have permissions to access the device without the need of root permissions.

Maintainers

• Arvydas Juskevicius - http://twitter.com/arvydev

• Rob Berwick - http://twitter.com/robberwick