Python Control Systems Library Wiki

Feedback control system analysis and design

Status: Alpha

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EPD Installation

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(The following instructions are for MacOS 10.8, but should work similarly for other operating systems)

Download and install the Enthought Python Distribution (EPD)
- Download from http://www.enthought.com/products/edudownload.php
- Double click installer and follow directions (requires administrator permissions)
- EPD contains numpy, scipy, matplotlib and ipython
Download and install the latest version of control-python, the control systems toolbox for python
- Download control-0.5a.tar.gz file from http://sourceforge.net/projects/python-control
- Decompress using 'tar zxf control-0.5a.tgz' (or whatever the latest version is)
- Run EPD python, cd to location of python-control distribution, and run
  
  ~~~~~~
  In [1]: run setup.py install
  ~~~~~~
- Note: you must install python-control using the EPD version of python in order to have the libraries installed in the proper location. If you install from the regular command line, you will install in the system python path, but not the EPD python path (which is required to access numpy, scipy and matplotlib).
- Note: you must have administrator privileges for the installation to be completed. If you cannot install while logged in as administrator, you can set the permissions on the site-packages/ directory to give write access to your user account (requires sudo privileges).
To enable certain advanced functions (MIMO operations, LQR, LQE), you will need to install the slycot libraries. This requires a fortran compiler such as f77 or gfortran. For more information, see the installation page.