Install#

Installing pymmcore-plus#

pymmcore-plus can be installed with pip:

pip install pymmcore-plus

or with conda:

conda install -c conda-forge pymmcore-plus

... and then proceed to the next section to learn about device adapters.

Installing Micro-Manager Device Adapters#

Just like the underlying pymmcore library, pymmcore-plus also relies on the device adapters and C++ core provided by mmCoreAndDevices. They can be installed in two ways:

Use the mmcore command line tool

This library provides a quick way to install the latest version of micro-manager:
```
mmcore install
```
This will download the latest release of micro-manager and, by default, place it in a pymmcore-plus\mm folder in the user's data directory (e.g. C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\pymmcore-plus\mm). If you would like to modify the location of the installation, or the release of micro-manager to install, you can use the --dest and --release flags respectively.

For more information on the install command, run:
```
mmcore install --help
```
To explore all the mmcore command line tool functionalities, run:
```
mmcore --help
```
Download manually from micro-manager.org

Go to the micro-manager downloads page and download the latest release for your Operating System.

Critical

The device interface version MUST match between pymmcore and the Micro-Manager device adapters. See below

Show the currently used Micro-Manager installation#

To see which micro-manager installation pymmcore-plus is using, you can run:

mmcore list

or, if you didn't install with the cli extra, you can use find_micromanager:

python -c "from pymmcore_plus import find_micromanager; print(find_micromanager())"

Set the active Micro-Manager installation#

By default, pymmcore-plus will look for a Micro-Manager folder in the default install location. On Windows this is C:\Program Files\, on macOS it is /Applications/ and on Linux it is /usr/local/lib/. To override these default device adapter search path, set the MICROMANAGER_PATH environment variable

export MICROMANAGER_PATH=/path/to/installation

If you want to permanently set the Micro-Manager installation path that pymmcore-plus uses, you can use the mmcore use command:

mmcore use <some path or pattern>

... where <some path or pattern> is either a path to an existing directory (containing micro-manager device adapters) or a pattern to match against directories returned by find_micromanager.

Alternatively, you can use the use_micromanager function, passing either a path to an existing directory, or a pattern to match against directories returned by find_micromanager:

python -c "from pymmcore_plus import use_micromanager; use_micromanager(path=..., pattern=...)"

On Linux#

On a linux based system the easiest approach is to just install the C++ core of micromanager, mmCoreAndDevices. To do that follow the build instructions in the micro-manager repo.

Understanding Device Interface Versions#

Micro-Manager's C++ layer (called MMCore) controls devices via adapters that are compiled into platform-specific shared libraries. These libraries are always compiled to work with a specific "device interface version" expected by the MMCore object itself. If you try to load a device adapter with a device interface version that does not match the version expected by the core, then you will get an error.

pymmcore is a library that wraps the C++ code and makes it available to python. It has a 5-number version string that looks something like 11.1.1.71.2. The first three parts (here: 11.1.1) represent the version of the MMCore library. The next number (here: 71) is the device interface version that pymmcore expects. (The last number is a pymmcore-specific build number). To query version information of your installed libraries you can run:

mmcore --version

Critical

You must use device adapter libraries that were compiled for the same device interface version as your version of pymmcore.

By default, when you run mmcore install, it will pick the latest compatible version to install. However, you can also do this explicitly. For the example above, for a device interface version of 71, you could explicitly install the last compatible device adapters listed on the table below with mmcore install as follows:

mmcore install -r 20250310

Here is a list of the latest device interface numbers, the date of the first nightly build where they were available, the last nightly build date to support that version, and the commit in mmCoreAndDevices that bumped the version.

Version	Release Date	Last Release	Commit
73	20250318		55863b2d8
72	20250318	20250318	b8de737b2
71	20221031	20250310	7ba63fb8f
70	20210219	20221030	8687ddb51
69	20180712		1a9938168
68	20171107		285a9fbb2
67	20160609		2cafb3481

Older versions

Version	Release Date	Commit
66	20160608	6378720c9
65	20150528	b98858d3b
64	20150515	6fdcdc274
63	20150505	ae4ced454
62	20150501	38cfde8ef
61	20140801	aac034a5c
60	20140618	cff69f1c2
59	20140515	1a3c3c884
58	20140514	b3781c0a9
57	20140125	97beb0f6c
56	20140120	bbf1b852c
55	20131221	d9d939aed
54	20131022	0058a1202
53	20121108	34329bb10
52	20120925	feeeff5d0
51	20120117	c62cd71df
50	20120117	121dea472
49	20111026	0f999b4f7
48	20111010	5407292c4
47	20110916	de02aa524
46	20110915	f886a5a60
45	20110722	3de97a552
44	20110721	adffbed3c
43	20110721	f1fa3260c
42	20110720	70d420b79
41	20110626	6f1e9e3c7
40	20110526	c9c4f901b
39	20110411	d6cf30e11
38	20110324	5fb856c6d
39	20110322	aca92c283
38	20101224	3327c6083
37	20101221	63e284ccf
36	20100920	7b180c4ef
35	20100823	41603ae0c
34	20100202	5bd9a38d5
28	20080911	ecdc3ffe9
27	20080806	644297085
26	20080604	99fd3cd80
16	20070412	38ebafde1
15	20070405	18ec4b48b
14	20070227	3b69e7670