Tutorial 0: Getting Started

This “tutorial” just helps you get set up and ready to follow the other tutorials.

Before anything else, if you don’t already have Python 3.6 or newer and ndspy installed, please see the Installation section.

Writing a test script

The tutorials aren’t intended to be done in the interactive Python shell; they instead demonstrate writing short script files, which is my preferred way of getting things done with ndspy. Thus, it’s a good idea to check that you’re able to do that.

Make a new Python file (say, test.py), open it with with your favorite text editor, and insert the following:

import ndspy

print('Hello world!')

Then try running it with the copy of Python you installed ndspy in. Your text editor might provide a built-in way to do that, or you may need to run it from the terminal / command prompt using a command like one of these:

python3 test.py

py -3 -m test.py

If the script prints Hello world! and exits, everything’s good.

Tip

If you get an error like this:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test.py", line 1, in <module>
    import ndspy
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'ndspy'

Then you’re running a copy of Python that doesn’t have ndspy installed. Try putting the first two digits of the version of Python you installed into the command instead of just 3 – for example, python3.6 test.py.