2. Installing python requirements

The Raspbian Wheezy images comes with python 2.7 already installed, but BrewPi uses a few python modules that you have to install yourself:

• pySerial For communication with the Arduino.
• simplejson To encode and decode JSON objects. Easier to use than the default JSON module.
• ConfigObj For configuration files support.
• psutil To view running processes and close/kill them from within python
• python-git A Python library to work with git repositories. Used by the update script.

All 5 modules can be easily installed with apt-get:

sudo apt-get install python-serial python-simplejson python-configobj python-psutil python-git

Finally, the python script can reprogram the Arduino, but it needs avrdude to do so. Install arduino-core, which includes avrdude.

sudo apt-get install arduino-core

That’s it, everything is ready for running the BrewPi script. Let’s get it from GitHub in the next step.