Still having trouble with ezCol

[Tom Nathe]

So I run py -m pip install setuptools, and it installs nicely.

Then I go run py ezCol.py, and the program does it's thing then pukes out saying "Module pkg_resources not found".

This thing is driving me nuts, since I don't know what I'm missing, and the Windows installation instructions are outdated and/or confusing when it comes to individual elements of the package install. 

For setuptooools:

PS C:\ezra> python -m pip install --upgrade setuptools
Requirement already satisfied: setuptools in C:\Users\tmnat\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages (82.0.0)

For ezCol error:

Process Process-1:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\tmnat\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\multiprocessing\process.py", line 320, in _bootstrap
    self.run()
    ~~~~~~~~^^
  File "C:\Users\tmnat\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\multiprocessing\process.py", line 108, in run
    self._target(*self._args, **self._kwargs)
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\ezRA\ezCol.py", line 1780, in sdrTask
    from rtlsdr import RtlSdr
  File "C:\Users\tmnat\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\rtlsdr\__init__.py", line 19, in <module>
    import pkg_resources
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pkg_resources'

[Andrew Thornett]

Tom - would you like a Zoom meeting with me to see if we can sort this out? If so email me at andrew (at) thornett (dot) net

Andy

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---

From: sara...@googlegroups.com <sara...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Tom Nathe <tmn...@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2026 10:46:49 PM
To: Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers <sara...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [SARA] Still having trouble with ezCol

 

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[Tom Nathe]

Hi Andy!

I just got ezCol to work!

What I had to do was drill down and find where 'pkg_resources' was used in 

site-packages\rtlsdr\__init__.py.

And according to the internet, I had to replace pkg_resources with importlib.resources. Reason: pkg_resources has been deprecated for several years now. 

https://github.com/mu-editor/mu/issues/2485

Nowhere in the ezRA Windows installation instructions is this change mentioned.

So, for now, I think I'm good.

Tom

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[tedcl...@gmail.com]

Nice detective work, Tom !

I collect data with free Linux PCs.

I find my Windows 10 PC is running Python 3.9.4, which does not show a problem.

I see available Win11 Python version 3.12 and 3.14.2.

Python keeps changing, confusing old libraries like pyrtlsdr ?

I see this,

      https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7446187/no-module-named-pkg-resources

which has a recent Feb 13 post saying,

      Beginning Feb 8th, 2026 with setuptools>=82, pkg_resources has been removed,

            https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/pull/5007

      The quick fix is you should pin your setuptools to an older version - consider pip install setuptools==81.0.0.

      Longer term, you should aim to update or remove any libraries or code references which use pkg_resources, and consider importlib (here's a migration guide).

Maybe this will work ?,

      py  -m  pip  install  setuptools==81.0.0

Who has an innocent Windows 11 to test this on ?

---
Ted Cline
TedClineGit at gmail.com

[tedcl...@gmail.com]

... and I see on
      https://github.com/pyrtlsdr/pyrtlsdr/commit/d0d17f23f83e9f90b5bc255098dea04719199ca9

about just 13 hours ago, I think that pyrtlsdr source code was changed to replace

      import pkg_resources
with

      import importlib.metadata

https://github.com/pyrtlsdr/pyrtlsdr

says the last release was   v0.3.0   on   Aug 2, 2023.

[Tom Nathe]

Hi Art -

Yes, installing setuptools==81.0.0 does work on my Windows 10 Pro machine. The machine that runs the antenna is a Windows 10 Home edition, but it is in a remote location that I can't get to until next weekend.

That was quite the dig to find the problem with pkg_resources. I only found it in a GitHub message related to problems with pkg_resources not working in other Python programs. 

Now my next two questions are -

1) How do you make that ezCol display smaller? I can't see the whole thing, and there is no way of making it smaller to fit my screen. I'm not seeing any sort of sizing reference in the configuration.

2) When I exit out of ezCol, the background CMD or PowerShell display they do not cleanly shut down. I have to physically close the displays and restart those commands. 

For both items, I'm most likely missing something that I overlooked, so I'll keep digging through those problems for the rest of the week.

Tom

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[andrew....@googlemail.com]

Reducing of ezCol screen - right click anywhere on Windows desktop and change resolution of screen.

 

Exiting ezCol - better not to do this by clicking X at top right corner of ezCol windows- instead go to command line terminal window (black background with lines such as C:\ezRABase\ezRA\......) and press <ctrl> and <c> together repeatedly until ezCol exits. This is proper way to do it. It closes all windows and saves latest data to file.

 

Andy

 

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[Tom Nathe]

Thanks, Andy!

I accidentally stumbled over how to do both late last night. Looks like I got everything working the way it's supposed to.

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