Install

Default install

BSL requires Python version 3.8 or higher and is available on PyPI. It is distributed with a compatible version of liblsl.

$ pip install bsl

Not yet available.

$ pip install git+https://github.com/fcbg-platforms/bsl

Optional dependencies

Parallel port

ParallelPortTrigger sends trigger (8 bits values) to a parallel port. On Linux, the pyparallel library is required. If an Arduino to parallel port (LPT) converter is used, the pyserial library is required. Both can be installed using the extra-key triggers:

$ pip install bsl[triggers]

On Linux, the user must have access to the parallel port. For instance, if an onboard parallel port at the address /dev/parport0 is used, you can check the group owning the device with:

$ ls -l /dev/parport0

Usually, the group is lp. The user should be added to this group:

$ sudo usermod -aG lp $USER

Moreover, pyparallel requires the lp kernel module to be unloaded. This can be done at boot with a blacklist-parallelport.conf file containing the line blacklist lp in /etc/modprobe.d/.

If an Arduino to parallel port (LPT) converter is used, the user should be added to the dialout group which owns the serial port used:

$ sudo usermod -aG dialout $USER

Qt

At the moment, BSL requires PyQt5. Future versions will support other Qt bindings via qtpy. On Linux based distribution, PyQt5 requires system libraries:

$ sudo apt install -y qt5-default  # Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
$ sudo apt install -y qtbase5-dev qt5-qmake  # Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

Advance install

By default, BSL is distributed with a recent version of liblsl that should work on Ubuntu-based distribution, macOS and Windows. If your OS is not compatible with the distributed version or if you want to use a specific liblsl, provide the path to the library in an environment variable LSL_LIB.

Troubleshooting

On Linux, liblsl requires libpugixml-dev and LabRecorder requires qt6-base-dev and freeglut3-dev.

$ sudo apt install -y libpugixml-dev qt6-base-dev freeglut3-dev

On macOS, homebrew can be used to download and install liblsl:

$ brew install labstreaminglayer/tap/lsl

To test the installation, you can run a fake stream with a StreamPlayer and display it with a StreamViewer.

  • Download a sample bsl.datasets:

    import bsl
dataset = bsl.datasets.eeg_resting_state.data_path()
print (dataset)  # displays the path to the -raw.fif dataset

  • Run a StreamPlayer either from a python console:

    import bsl
dataset = bsl.datasets.eeg_resting_state.data_path()
player = StreamPlayer('TestStream', dataset)
player.start()

    Or from a terminal in the folder containing the dataset (~/bsl_data/eeg_sample):

    $ bsl_stream_player TestStream resting_state-raw.fif

  • Run a StreamViewer from a different terminal:

    $ bsl_stream_viewer

    The StreamViewer should load and display:

    StreamViewer