Software Installation¶
This guide covers installing the software tools needed to communicate with and configure your moteus controller.
Installing moteus_gui¶
The moteus_gui package provides essential tools including tview (telemetry viewer) and moteus_tool (configuration utility). Installation varies slightly by platform.
Note: On Linux, you may need to use either a virtual environment or the --break-system-packages option.
fdcanusb udev rules: If using the fdcanusb or mjcanfd-usb-1x adapter, you may need to set up udev rules so regular users can access the device. Follow the instructions at: https://github.com/mjbots/fdcanusb/blob/master/70-fdcanusb.rules
Note: On some older Windows installations, you need to invoke python as python3, not python.
Note: For complete Raspberry Pi setup instructions including GUI and hardware configuration, see Raspberry Pi Setup.
Running tview¶
tview is the primary tool for configuring and inspecting the state of your moteus controller. Launch it with:
Alternative: Your pip installation may have added a tview script to your PATH, which you can use instead.
Understanding tview¶
tview has three main panes: left, right, and bottom.
Left Pane Tabs¶
The left pane contains two tabs:
Right tab (default): Shows a hierarchical tree of all telemetry items currently being reported by the controller.
Left tab: Shows a hierarchical tree of all configurable parameters. You can update parameter values by double-clicking on their value and entering a new one.
Right Pane¶
The right pane displays real-time plots of telemetry items. You can populate it with plots by right-clicking on telemetry items in the telemetry tab (left pane, right tab).
Bottom Pane¶
The bottom pane contains two tabs:
Left tab - console (default): a command line console showing the moteus diagnostic protocol. It:
- Shows commands sent internally by tview and their responses
- Provides an interactive console to interact with the device using the diagnostic protocol
Right tab - Python: A python REPL that can be used to interact with the the controller(s) using the moteus python library.
Next Steps¶
Now that you have the software installed and understand the tview interface, proceed to the Configuration guide to set up your moteus controller for your specific motor and application.