Software Installation

Step 1: Write your SD Card

You must install an operating system first to set up and use the Raspberry Pi board. Raspbian or Raspberry Pi OS is a Debian-based computer operating system for Raspberry Pi board. There are several OS versions for the workstation. Raspberry Pi OS 32-bit must be installed.

Coming soon: a pre-built SD card image that contains a full operating system with all the necessary software pre-installed.

Before you start, please get:

A computer with Internet
A MicroSD card
A SD card reader (OPTIONAL)
A SD card adapter (OPTIONAL)

To write your MicroSD card:

Download the latest .img file from Raspberry Pi website.
Use an adapter to connect your MicroSD card to your computer.
Use a program such as Etcher or Raspberry Pi imager to flash the .img file onto your MicroSD card.

More detailed information on installing a Raspberry Pi operating system image onto an SD card can be found here on the Raspberry Pi website.

First boot:

Connect your Pi to a display, mouse, keyboard, and power. When the Pi first boots, you will be asked to complete a quick setup before rebooting.

Once you have installed and configured the Raspberry Pi OS, you can install the User Interface App.

Step 2: Enable SSH, SPI, and Camera

Method 1: Use the graphical tool "Raspberry Pi Configuration". This is found under Menu > Preferences > Raspberry Pi Configuration. Then you must select the "Interfaces" tab and set SSH, SPI, and Camera to "Enabled".

Method 2: From the command line or Terminal window, start by running sudo raspi-config. This will launch the raspi-config utility:

Select “Interfacing Options”.
Highlight the "SSH" option and activate Select.
Select and activate Yes.
Highlight and activate Ok.
When prompted to reboot highlight and activate Yes.
Repeat the previous steps to enable "SPI" and "Camera".

Step 3: Edit config.txt

We need to edit the config file sudo nano /boot/config.txt

Add disable_camera_led=2 at the end of the file

Then, save it with CTL+O > Enter > CTL+X and reboot the system sudo reboot.

Step 4: Plug in Camera

How to connect properly a Raspberry Pi camera and more information about the sensor can be found here on the Raspberry Pi website. Use vcgencmd get_camera to verify if your camera was detected and raspistill -o test.jpg if it works.

Cameras are sensitive to static. Earth yourself before handling the PCB. A sink tap or similar should suffice if you don’t have an earthing strap.

Step 5: Install Libraries

The Python libraries that allow the Webb App to work on your Pi are the followings:

Flask 1.0.2
Flask-socketio 4.3.2
Werkzeug 0.14.1
Jinja2 2.10
Markupsafe 1.1.0
itsdangerous 0.24
eventlet 0.33.3
spidev 3.6
RPi.GPIO 0.7.1
picamera 1.13
Pillow 9.4.0

Method 1: Use the terminal window and install each of the above libraries with pip install. Example: pip install Flask==1.0.2

Method 2: Download requirements.txt file and copy it into your Home folder on your Pi. Use the terminal window and install all the libraries with pip install -r requirements.txt

Use pip list to verify which modules are installed and their versions.

Step 6: Set up the GPIO pin states

GPIO pins states must be modified during the bootup sequence to use them with the peripherals of the workstation. Our own custom dt-blob.bin file specifies which pin states should change:

Download the dts file and copy it into your Home folder.
Install the Device Tree compiler by running sudo apt install device-tree-compiler
Run the dtc command sudo dtc -I dts -O dtb -o /boot/dt-blob.bin dt-blob.dts

It is very useful to use the command raspi-gpio get to look at the setup of the GPIO pins to check that they are as you expect.

Step 7: Run the UI App

Download the zip file, copy it, and extract the folder into your Home folder.

Method 1: Go to the web app folder and double click on pi_webapp.py. A programming editor will open the Python file, then run the code.

Method 2: Use the terminal window, then cd webapp and python pi_webapp.py

Use a browser and go to https://0.0.0.0:5000 to use the Web App

Step 8: Run the UI App on startup

Once the folder and Python files are in your Home folder, configure the Raspberry Pi to run the web app on startup.

We must edit the rc.local file sudo nano /etc/rc.local

Add sudo -H -u pi python3 /home/pi/webapp/pi_webapp.py & before exit 0 on the file

Then, save it with CTL+O > Enter > CTL+X, and reboot the system sudo reboot.

When the Raspberry Pi boot again, use a browser and go to https://0.0.0.0:5000 to open the Web App.

Note: While the program is running in the background, you will not be able to use the camera. First, you must kill the process related to the program. To identify the process (number of PID), use ps aux. Then, use sudo kill -9 PID where PID is the process. If you want to run the program again, repeat STEP 6 or reboot the system.