piSpectro Installation

The installation is fundamentally simple but deliberately described in great detail to eliminate any potential confusion or obstacles.

Overview

Requirements
piSpectro Download
Installation
Launch the program

Program Update after Installation:

Go to the Help → Update piSpectro… menu and install the latest version with a click. It is recommended to do this whenever you haven't used the program for some time. This way you are always working with the latest version.

Details

① Requirements

Raspberry Pi (recommended: Raspberry Pi 4) with Raspbian OS installed

It’s always a good idea to update the Raspbian system beforehand:

sudo apt update  
sudo apt upgrade

This ensures that all package lists are current and the latest versions are installed.

② ''piSpectro'' Download

After downloading, extract the file ✔

③ Installation

The actual program does not require a system-wide install. The installation only concerns the libraries needed to run it.

To install the program cleanly, a dedicated piSpectro environment is created on the Raspberry Pi.

Advantages of this method:

The program can be completely uninstalled at any time without leftovers.
Existing system configurations remain unaltered.
Installation is done via a single execution of the supplied setup script.
After installation, you only need to switch to the piSpectro environment – then the program can be launched.

Change into the console directory `pispectro/doc/readme`:

cd pispectro/doc/readme

Make the script `setup_pispectro.sh` executable:

chmod 775 ./setup_pispectro.sh

Then run the script:

./setup_pispectro.sh

Activating and deactivating the virtual environment

After successful setup, the virtual environment needs to be activated:

source ~/.pispectro/bin/activate

This activates the `.pispectro` Python environment. This is indicated in the terminal prompt by a prefix, e.g.:

(.pispectro) user@raspberrypi:~/path/to/project$

While this environment is active, all Python commands use the installed libraries (e.g., `pyqtgraph`, `astropy`, etc.).

To deactivate the environment:

deactivate

The prefix then disappears from the prompt, and the system-wide Python is used again.

④ Launch the program

Open a terminal and change into the `pispectro/src` directory, where the `pispectro.py` program resides.

Make the program executable (only needed once):

  chmod 775 ./pispectro.py

Activate the virtual environment:

  source ~/.pispectro/bin/activate

Launch the program with:

  ./pispectro.py

This command must be run in the directory containing `pispectro.py`.