For the latest version of PAMGUARD...

The latest version of PAMGUARD is available for download at our SourceForge site:

PAMGUARD Platform support

PAMGUARD should run on most platforms with a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) installed. Development and testing has largley been carried out using JVMs from Sun which can be downloaded from their Java website.

GPS and NMEA acquisition are supported on all platforms using Trent Jarvi's RXTX package (www.rxtx.org). Appropriate Versions of the shared libraries should now be included in the Windows Installers, Mac OS X disc images and the Linux zip files available on the PAMGUARD Source Forge site. If you are manually configuring PAMGUARD using the jarfile or having problems with a given version of the RXTX library then you may want to visit www.rxtx.org to read the RXTX wiki and/or download another copy of the library.

While there is good cross-platform support for standard sound cards there is no JAVA support for ASIO sound cards and other data acquisition devices such as those manufacturered by National Instruments.

To address this problem, the PAMGUARD team are developing platform dependent libraries, generally written in C, to interface to certain hardware types. Current levels of support are listed in the table below.

Certain timing functions (such as setting the PC clock from GPS) are also platform dependent and require special libraries and may also need PAMGUARD to be run with Administrator privileges.

Installing and Running PAMGUARD

Windows (Core and Beta)

Download and run the latest .exe installer from our SourceForge site.

When you run the installer, all the files you need will be placed in a folder in your Program Files directory and a startup icon will be added to the Windows start menu.

Linux (Beta only)

Download the latest tar.gz from the SourceForge site.
Uncompress and untar the contents.

In the folder created there are further instructions in a Linux "Read Me" and some sample launcher shell scripts.

Mac (Beta only)

Download and mount the latest DMG disk image from SourceForge.
Drag PAMGUARD Beta folder into "Applications"

This should result in a PAMGUARD Beta folder in Applications with little launcher "Apps" for starting PAMGUARD in its various modes.

Custom installs using jarfiles - Windows,Linux and Mac (e.g. Alpha releases)

Download the desired platform independent .jar file from our SourceForge site.

You may also need other shared libraries depending on what platform and what functionality you hope to use. (E.g. the appropriate rxtx serial library will needed in order to acquire gps data.)

Then launch the jarfile with an appropriate command line, probably along the lines of:

  java -Djava.library.path=/your_shared_library_folder -Xms384m -Xmx1024m -jar PamguardBeta_X_X_XX.jar

which specifies:

-the folder in which the JVM should look for shared libraries
-the initial and maximum heapsizes for the JVM
-the runnable jarfile containing release X_X_XX of PAMGUARD

Once you have command line that successfully launches PAMGUARD on your system then there is always the option of incorporating that into a suitable shell script or batch file.