Raspberry Pi Software Setup

At this point, your Raspberry Pi should have successfully booted up, and you are now looking at the Kuiper Linux Desktop:

Phaser Picture

If you are using the VNC Configuration, then you can login to:

hostname:  analog.local   
password:  analog

Note that the hostname will change to phaser.local after the steps below.

There are some configuration settings that need to be performed on the SD card. The easiest way to do this is by running a setup script. This does require a wired or wireless internet connection, but it is much easier than doing things manually. Once connected to a network, run the following commands (and take a look at the setup script if you’re suspicious, and note that there may be some updates as newer versions of Kuiper Linux are released.) The script is commented if you want a detailed description of what it’s doing.

Open a command prompt and type:

wget https://github.com/thorenscientific/rpi_setup_stuff/raw/main/phaser/phaser_sdcard_setup.sh
sudo chmod +x phaser_sdcard_setup.sh
./phaser_sdcard_setup.sh
sudo reboot

The password is analog. After typing reboot, wait a few minutes for the system to reboot.

Note: After running the script, the hostname will be phaser.local

If you are going to be running scripts and other software directly on the Raspberry Pi, it’s a good idea set a few options using the Raspberry Pi configuration utility. This can be accessed from the Start Menu under Preferences, or by running:

sudo raspi-config

Set the locale, keyboard, timezone, and wifi country (if you’ll be connecting to your network by wifi.)

You’ll also need to downgrade the numpy version to fix a compatibility issue with our existing example python scripts:

sudo pip install –force-reinstall numpy==1.22

Appendix: Configuration Script Notes

To manually edit config.txt, add the following:

# Phaser board overlay:
dtoverlay=rpi-cn0566
# Heartbeat blinky:
dtparam=act_led_gpio=26
dtparam=act_led_trigger=heartbeat

# Short GPIO121 (pin 40) to ground for shutdown:
dtoverlay=gpio-shutdown,gpio_pin=21,active_low=1,gpiopull=up

If you will be logging in via VNC, see this article

Also if running “headless” without a monitor, set the HDMI group and mode accordingly:

# dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d

# uncomment to force a specific HDMI mode (this will force 1920x1080)
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=82

Note

For questions or help with the Phaser, please visit: EngineerZone