RingLight Control

Flet GUI for the microscope-mounted NeoPixel WRGB ring. It finds a classic Arduino on the serial port and sends the same commands as the MATLAB ringLight_GUI.

Requires

• Python 3.10 or later
• Arduino running ringLight.ino (/home/justin/jkcode/arduino/ringLight/ringLight.ino)

Close the Arduino Serial Monitor before launching — only one app may hold the serial port at a time.

Serial protocol

115200 baud, LF-terminated lines:

• W128,R64,G32,B0 set ring color (White, Red, Green, Blue; each 0-255)
• OFF turn ring off

The Off button sends OFF and leaves the slider values unchanged. Closing the window also sends OFF and releases the port.

Setup

Linux / macOS:

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

Windows (PowerShell):

py -3 -m venv .venv
.\.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
pip install -r requirements.txt

Usage

python ringLight3.py

On Windows, close the Arduino IDE Serial Monitor before launching. The app looks for official Arduino and common clone USB serial chips (CH340, FTDI, CP210x).

Windows executable

flet build windows must be run on Windows. It cannot be cross-compiled from Linux.

1. Install Python 3.10+ from python.org, and Visual Studio 2022 with the Desktop development with C++ workload (needed by Flutter).
2. In this directory:

.\.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
pip install -r requirements.txt
flet doctor
python ringLight3.py
flet build windows

The executable is written to build\windows\x64\runner\Release\RingLight.exe.

A quicker PyInstaller bundle (larger, no Visual Studio) is:

flet pack main.py --name RingLight

That writes dist\RingLight.exe.