The general steps for installing the Freq Show software are: 

• Install Raspberry Pi Operating System
  • This guide was written and tested using the following OS images:
    • 2024-11-19-raspios-bookworm-arm64.img.xz
    • 2024-11-19-raspios-bookworm-armhf.img.xz
• Enable support for the PiTFT
  • This is done by enabling a device tree overlay via config.txt.
• Install required system software dependencies 
  
  • git is needed to clone (download) the Freq Show code
  • librtlsdr is needed to support communicating with the TV tuner dongle
• Set up a Python Virtual Environment
  • Also install additional required Python libraries
  • More info on Python Virtual Environments here 
• Install the Freq Show software

Let's go through each step.

Install Raspberry Pi OS

It should work to use any of the current Desktop versions (either 32bit or 64bit) of the official Raspberry Pi Operating System. There is nothing special about the initial operating system setup. It should work to follow Raspberry Pi's instructions here:

Configuring the Pi to connect to your local network can be done when writing the OS image to the SD card using the rpi-imager software. See the OS customization section in the instructions linked above.

Before proceeding, make sure the Raspberry Pi is booting OK and is connecting to your local network and the internet. The following setup commands can be run by either SSHing into the Pi or by running them directly on the Pi via a terminal window.

Enable Support for PiTFT

To enable support for the 3.5" PiTFT we add a device tree overlay entry to the config.txt file. Enabling the SPI and I2C interfaces can be done at the same time.

Use the text editor nano to open the /boot/firmware/config.txt file for editing:

Scroll to the bottom of the file and add these lines:

It should look something like this:

Then hit <CTRL><X> and say "yes" to save the changes and exit nano.

Next, reboot the pi:

And make sure the Pi Desktop shows up on the PiTFT after rebooting.

Install System Dependencies

We need a few additional system level software components. These are operating system libraries, not Python libraries, so we use apt-get in the usual way. Connect to a terminal, either via SSH or directly, on the Pi and execute the following commands to install these dependencies:

Set Up Virtual Environment

Next we'll create a Python Virtual Environment to use with the Freq Show software. In addition to creating the virtual environment, we'll install some additional Python libraries needed by the Freq Show software.

To create the virtual environment, run the following commands in a terminal:

And now activate the virtual environment:

The prompt should change to show the virtual environment name "env". Now we can pip install the additional Python libraries needed:

Running the above commands should looking something like this:

The actual output from running pip may vary depending on your setup, location, etc. But it should result in some indication that the libraries are already installed and/or were successfully installed.

Install Freq Show Software

The Freq Show software is kept in a Github Repository. We'll download a local copy of this code using git to clone the repository. To do so, in a terminal, run the following commands:

And now it should be possible to run the Freq Show software:

The output should look like this:

And the Freq Show screen should show on the PiTFT:

Now let's go into more details about using the Freq Show software.