Wireless networking MUST be working before continuing. If your Pi is not on the network yet, work through the prior page to diagnose the issue.

Further configuration of the Raspberry Pi will take place over the network using SSH, not the keyboard and mouse.

  • The SSH server should already be enabled on the Raspberry Pi — this was done during the initial raspi-config setup.
  • On Mac or Linux systems, you can use a Terminal or xterm window.
  • For Windows systems, you can download PuTTY.

The terminal command to access the system would be:

ssh [email protected] (or whatever hostname was configured) if using Netatalk

or:

ssh [email protected] (or whatever the system’s actual numeric IP address is)

You’ll be prompted for a password — use the password that you set up in raspi-config, or “raspberry” if you left the default. Additionally, the first time connecting you may be prompted regarding a host key for security…enter Y (or click Yes) when prompted.

Update Installed Software

Once logged in, type the following at the command prompt:

sudo apt-get update

This updates the list of available software packages, and takes a couple of minutes (just do the “update,” not “upgrade” — the latter can sometimes take hours!)

Install Prerequisite Software

Several prerequisite software packages need to be installed, using different techniques.

First is a collection of code libraries, using the apt-get package manager:

sudo apt-get install git i2c-tools python-pexpect python-smbus libavfilter-dev libavformat-dev libcurl4-gnutls-dev libgcrypt-dev libjson-c-dev libao-dev

This takes a little while; there’s about 100 megabytes of stuff to download and install.

Now use git and wget to install the rest. There’s our LCD radio UI, then a collection of Adafruit libraries for Raspberry Pi, and finally pianobar, a terminal-based Pandora client for Raspberry Pi. Do not use the apt-get version of this, it’s out of date!

cd
git clone -b legacy https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-Raspberry-Pi-Python-Code
git clone https://github.com/adafruit/Python-WiFi-Radio
wget https://github.com/PromyLOPh/pianobar/archive/e945578ab22912049f1e547ce7b25b01089f7590.zip
unzip e945578ab22912049f1e547ce7b25b01089f7590.zip

Note the “-b legacy” on the first “git clone” line. It’s required there. But not on anything else.

Now some configuration…

First, link some of the Adafruit libraries into the radio software directory:

cd Python-WiFi-Radio
ln -s ../Adafruit-Raspberry-Pi-Python-Code/Adafruit_CharLCDPlate/*.py .

(Note: there’s a space before the last period above. Don’t miss it. Copy and paste this exact line, if possible.)

Next, we’ll compile pianobar from source code:

cd ../pianobar-e945578ab22912049f1e547ce7b25b01089f7590
make

You might get a long list of compiler warnings. That’s fine, as long as the build finishes. Compiler errors, on the other hand, will stop the build process. You might be missing a library from the apt-get sequence above, or something in the software may have changed since these instructions were written, in which case post in the Adafruit Forums for assistance.

Once compiled, install using:

sudo cp pianobar /usr/local/bin

Don’t worry about configuring this software yet; we’ll proceed there later. Just use the steps above to get it installed for now.

This guide was first published on Apr 12, 2013. It was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

This page (Install Software Packages) was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

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