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Installing the binaries (64bit Windows only)

  1. Download this zip file.
  2. Drag and drop the downloaded and unzipped folder to the location of your choice, and rename it "Open Ephys."
  3. Run FrontPanelUSB-DriverOnly-4.4.0.exe to install the acquisition board driver. 
  4. Double-click the "open-ephys" executable to run the application.
  5. (Optional) If you need a debug output to troubleshoot, run the executable with --console as parameter.

Building from source

(Note: The development and testing branches of the GUI has included some differences related to the building process. Those will be marked as such with a "development:" note)

  1. Create a GitHub account if you haven't already.
  2. While logged into your account, go to https://github.com/open-ephys/plugin-GUI and click the "Fork" button in the upper right. You now have your own copy of the GUI repository. Any changes you make will only affect this copy. (More info on forking here.)
  3. Make sure you have GitHub for Windows installed.
  4. Install Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 if you haven't already.
  5. Direct your browser to https://github.com/yourusername/plugin-GUI, where "yourusername" is replaced by your actual GitHub user name.
  6. Click the "Clone in Desktop" button.
  7. (development: Create the build files for the GUI)
  8. Run Resources/DLLs/FrontPanelUSB-DriverOnly-4.4.0.exe to install the acquisition board driver. This driver should be compatible with Windows 7, 8 and 8.1, but seems to work well on Windows 10 as well.
  9. In Visual Studio, select the open-ephys.sln file from the Builds/VisualStudio2013 folder. (development: The file will be open-ephys-GUI.sln and will be located on the Build folder)
  10. Select Build/Build Solution (or press F6) to build the GUI from source or hit the "Debug" button to build and run. (development: To run and debug the GUI from Visual Studio you must either set the "open-ephys" project as default by right clicking it and choosing "Set as StartUp project". Remember than doing so will enable running the debugger through the Debug ("play") button, but doing so will not rebuild the plugins in case that was needed. To rebuild the GUI you must still select build solution or the F6 button. Alternatively, you can run the debugger in the GUI without changing the default project by right clicking the "open-ephys" project and selecting "Debug/start new instance")
  11. Copy Resources/Bitfiles/rhd2000.bit to the Debug/bin folder created by Visual Studio (development: this step is not needed)
Building the plugins

(development: These steps are no longer required as the plugins are now built by the main project generated by CMake. Note that the ZMQ plugins and HDF5 Plugins are no longer shipped by default and can be downloaded, built and installed from their own repositories)

  1. The GUI must be compiled prior to the plugins, as the plugin build process needs the open-ephys.lib file created by doing so in its default directory.
  2. Open the VS solution file Builds\Visualstudio2013\Plugins\Plugins.sln
  3. Select the appropiate architecture and release mode that matches the one the GUI was built with.
  4. Either build the complete solution to generate all plugins or build specific projects to compile individual plugins.
  5. If you would now like to have a "built and unchanging" version of the GUI, e.g. for other users of the machine/rig, copy the contents of the "Release" or "Release64" folder to an appropriate spot on your Desktop, in the Program Files folder, etc. You will also need to copy over the "Resources" folder from the source download, which includes things like the bitfile that needs to be downloaded to the FPGA.


Optional: The eCube plugin is not built by default. Mosts users won't need this plugin as it is for a specific devices, but in case you need it you must manually build its project. Installing the eCube API will allow you to build this plugin without errors. Depending on the version of Windows, you may still see some errors that can be fixed by manually registering the DLL in a command prompt with admin rights:

  • cd \Windows\SysWOW64
  • regSvr32 "C:\Program Files (x86)\EcubeAPI\ecubeapi32.dll"
  • regSvr32 "C:\Program Files (x86)\EcubeAPI\ecubeapi64.dll"


Now you can both use the GUI and make changes to the source code. We recommend reading through the developer documentation before doing so.

NOTE: The debug version of the GUI runs really slowly on Windows. If you're doing any actual data acquisition, you should build the release version instead, which runs smoothly.

Any changes you commit can be synced with your GitHub repository through the GitHub application or from the command line. If you change something that you think would be useful for others, you can submit a pull request to the Open Ephys version of the GUI.

64bit Build Notes

(development: This section is no longer applicable)

 To build the 64 bit Windows version of the GUI

  • Either of the 64bit configurations (Debug64 or Release64) must be selected. "Release|x64" will build, but then the Plugins will not. "Release64|x64"  will.
  • BUT, when building the Plugins, "Release64|x64" will not be available, and you will choose "Release|x64" (or "Debug|x64") instead.
  • x64 architecture must me selected either from the configuration manager or the "Solution Platforms" combo box (if enabled in your workspace).
  • The binaries will be placed on a different folder than their 32bit counterparts


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