Starting

After finishing the installation process, there are two different ways of using the chipwhisperer software. You will most likely be using a Jupyter server to run a Jupyter notebook inside of your browser.

Jupyter Notebooks

Recommended reading for using Jupyter notebooks:

Here is a quick start guide based on you having finished the installation of chipwhisperer. It only covers steps unique to our chipwhisperer/Jupyter installation.

If you’ve installed via the VirtualBox VM image:

  1. Open VirtualBox and start the virtual machine

  2. Open your browser outside the VM

  3. Connect to localhost:8888 in your browser

If you’ve installed via the Windows Installer:

  1. Run the ChipWhisperer shortcut.
    • This shortcut is available in the ChipWhisperer install folder,

      the start menu, and optionally as a shortcut on the desktop.

If you’ve installed natively:

  1. Make sure you are using a bash like terminal. Many of the jupyter notebooks use bash to run make or remove files for building firmware. This may be changed in the future but for now it is required. If you installed using the Virtual Machine (VM) the terminal is a bash like terminal and you should have no problem. If you installed on linux, same deal. However, if you installed on Windows/Mac you may have to install a bash like terminal. If you installed Git to install chipwhisperer you already have git-bash available to you. Here are a few bash-like terminals available on other windows:

    • (Recommended) Git-Bash (make sure you select to install git bash during the installation of Git.)

    • MinGW

    • Cygwin

  2. Start the bash terminal. Make sure you have access to chipwhisperer in the terminal using:

    python -c "import chipwhisperer as cw"
    

    This should exit without printing anything. If you get something like “module not found” then you should read up on PYTHONPATH and system PATH.

  3. Navigate to the chipwhisperer directory. If you installed chipwhisperer to /home/user/chipwhisperer then use:

    cd /home/user/chipwhisperer
    
  4. Start the Jupyter Server in that directory:

    jupyter notebook
    

    The Jupyter Notebook Server interface should be automatically opened in your browser. If not see next step.

  5. Navigate to the Jupyter Notebook Server interface at localhost:8888 using a browser and typing the address in the address bar.

  6. You should see the chipwhisperer folder in your browser, the tutorials can be found in the jupyter folder, not in the tutorials folder which unless you pulled the submodule should be empty.

    Note

    The tutorials folder is for autogenerated ReST files for the tutorials you see on readthedocs documentation. The tutorials folder is not the folder you are looking for, jupyter is.

Python Package

The chipwhisperer software can also be used without Jupyter Notebooks if you prefer. After you install chipwhisperer to the correct Python interpreter, use chipwhisperer as you normally would any python package:

import chipwhisperer as cw
help(cw)

The Python API has all the information about what functions, and classes are at your disposal.