Installation

ACQ4 depends on several free software packages to work properly. In most cases, these packages are easiest to install using the Anaconda python distribution:

1. Download and install Anaconda or Miniconda.

2. Clone the ACQ4 source repository (this requires git to be installed):

   git clone https://github.com/acq4/acq4.git
   cd acq4
   

3. Create a conda environment for acq4 (windows users must do this from the anaconda prompt):

   conda env create --name=acq4 --file=tools/requirements/qt5-generic.yml
   conda activate acq4
   

4. Install acq4 into your new conda environment:

   python setup.py develop
   

Improving performance with GPU

ACQ4 can use nVidia GPUs to improve performance if the cupy python package is installed. See the cupy documentation for more information on configuring CUDA and cupy correctly.

If you have a CUDA-supported GPU, this is highly recommended.

Starting ACQ4

Activate your acq4 conda environment, then start acq4:

conda activate acq4
python -m acq4

This should load the main manager window, from which you can interact with some devices and load modules.

Legacy Python 2 support

For systems that still require python 2 support, the python2 git branch contains the most recent ACQ4 version known to support python 2. More information can be found in the README for that branch: https://github.com/acq4/acq4/tree/python2