Installation

Bonsai Installation

To download Bonsai, select between the portable download and the installer download here.

• Portable (.zip): Installs a sandboxed version of Bonsai, keeping packages isolated from other environments. Extract the downloaded file and run Bonsai.exe from the extracted folder.

• Installer (.exe): Installs Bonsai and all its dependencies globally. Run the downloaded Bonsai-X.X.X.exe file, agree to the licenses, and launch Bonsai from the Bonsai Setup window or your OS search.

Tip

When using multiple environments, create and name shortcuts such that different Bonsai environments are easier to find and distinguish.

Package Management

Bonsai packages expand the set of operators available to you for building useful workflows. For example, the OpenEphys.Onix1 package is required to interface with Onix hardware through Bonsai. The Bonsai package manager can be accessed from Bonsai's landing window or its workflow editor:

or

Installing Packages

The following packages are required to run the workflows in this documentation:

• OpenEphys.Onix1.Design: An extension of the OpenEphys.Onix1 library that includes graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Installing OpenEphys.Onix1.Design automatically installs OpenEphys.Onix1 as a dependency.
• Bonsai.StarterPack: the "standard library" for Bonsai that contains tools that are used in almost every workflow.
• OpenEphys.Commutator: for controlling Open Ephys commutators.
• OpenEphys.Sockets.Bonsai: for establishing TCP Sockets (to stream data to the Open Ephys GUI, for example).

Tip

Additional packages will allow you to extend the functionality of ONIX hardware beyond the scope of this documentation. There are packages that allow ONIX be combined with visual psychophysics, marker-less pose estimation, HARP behavioral devices, and much more.

To install packages, open the package manager and:

1. Click the Browse tab.
2. Set Package source to All.
3. Search for the exact package name listed above, e.g. OpenEphys.Onix1.Design.
4. Click Install.
5. If a license agreement window appears, click I Accept.

Updating Packages

It is good practice to periodically check for package updates. To do this, open the package manager and:

1. Click the Update tab.
2. Set Package source to All.
3. Leave the search bar blank if you want to check for updates for all installed packages. Alternatively, if you want to check for an update for a particular package, you may type that package's name in the search bar to expedite the update retrieval process.
4. Click Update All if you want to perform all available updates that appear in the package browser. Alternatively, click on a package and click Update if you want to perform a subset of the available updates.

Uninstalling Packages

Sometimes it is helpful to uninstall packages. Open the package manager and:

1. Click the Installed tab.
2. Set Package source to All.
3. Leave the search bar blank if you want to see all installed packages. Alternatively, if you want to uninstall a particular package, you may type that package's name in the search bar.
4. Click a package and click Uninstall.

Now that Bonsai and pertinent packages are installed, the next step is to learn how to use the workflow editor to place operators from these newly acquired packages into a workflow.