KeyError: 'USERPROFILE'

[FilipDominec]

Making laboratory instrumentation available under one python module looks like an ambitious and potentially very important project. Thank you for this!

However, it is not clear in what stage of development it is, I could not find even basic documentation.

Experiment 1: Cloning the repository (on Ubuntu 19.04) and issuing

 python3 -c 'import pylabinstrument'

yields an error:

KeyError: 'USERPROFILE'

Experiment 2: Providing it with a "profile" (whatever it is) and directory:

mkdir tmpprofile/
export USERPROFILE=tmpprofile
python3 -c 'import pylabinstrument'

seems OK. But where to start?

Experiment 3: Trying random sub-module:

mkdir tmpprofile/
export USERPROFILE=tmpprofile
python3 -c 'import pylabinstrument.thorlabs.motion'

fails with

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'comtypes'

Experiment 4: Giving it comtypes dependency:

pip3 install comtypes --user
mkdir tmpprofile/
export USERPROFILE=tmpprofile
python3 -c 'import pylabinstrument.thorlabs.motion'

fails with

ImportError: cannot import name 'COMError'

Perhaps some version incompatibility?

Conclusion: A starter README for beginners would be useful.