Type the following into the terminal. This will install (in order): NumPy, SciPy, Matplotlib, PIL, PyGame, PsychoPy, and pyglet:

sudo apt-get install python-numpy python-scipy python-matplotlib python-imaging python-pygame psychopy python-pyglet

The instructions on the PyGaze website provide information about three additional programs, all of which are non-free or restricted software. In Shravan Vasishth‘s Eyetracking Lab they are using an Eyelink 1000 (1000Hz) eyetracker manufactured by SR Research (desktop mount camera system). They do not use SMI or Tobii eye-trackers. For this reason I will only install pylink here.

• pylink: proprietary library created by SR Research, requires registering with the SR Research support forum; see Section 2.2.1 below. Once registered, you can download and install pylink; see Section 2.2.2 below.
• PyViewX API: for communication with eye trackers manufactured by SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI), must request a download, provide some personal details, and wait for an e-mail with a download link.
• Tobii: for Tobii eye trackers via Tobii’s own Python bindings, based on Hiroyuki Sogo’s (Ehime University) script.

Installing PyGaze requires copying the PyGaze directory into Python’s site-packages directory. First check where this directory is located. One way to do this is with Python. In the terminal, type:

python

To check the site-packages directory, type the following in the Python console:

import site; site.getsitepackages()

This will list your site-packages directory. One of the directories I see listed is:

/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/

Remember this path. Exit the Python console by typing:

quit()

In order to install PyGaze, download the zip file from here: http://www.pygaze.org/downloads/. Go to the directory where the download was saved (for me, cd ~/Downloads/). To unzip PyGaze, in the terminal type:

unzip pygaze.zip

To copy the unzipped PyGaze directory into the site-packages directory, type the following in your terminal (of course, you should use the site-packages directory you got from above):

sudo cp -r pygaze /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/

Set the permissions to drwxr-sr-x:

sudo chmod 2755 -R /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pygaze/

Test if successful. Type python into the terminal and in the Python console type: import pygaze If you do not get an error message, you have successfully installed PyGaze.

When first running simple_tracker_experiment.py I encountered the following error:

pygame.error: No video mode large enough for 1920x1080

This is because pygame is trying to use the wrong screen size for my laptop. I was able to fix this by changing the screen size in constants.py (located in the same directory as simple_tracker_experiment.py) to my screen size (1600, 900) at the following line:

DISPSIZE = (1600,900) # canvas size

Be in touch with other PyGaze users at the forum: http://forum.cogsci.nl/index.php?p=/categories/pygaze. This is a great place to get help from the larger scientific community as well as to help others when you can.

If you write some great experiments, PyGaze encourages you to share them with the scientific community via their website. To do so you should contact them via their contact form here: http://www.pygaze.org/contact/#contactform.