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Prepping the Raspberry PI

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John Garner edited this page Oct 11, 2026 · 8 revisions

Introduction

This is a very high level overview of how to prepare a Raspberry Pi to run the PikaReader4Pi system. It assumes basic knowledge of a Linux based environment. Thankfully there are a lot of tutorials available on the internet if you need help.

Physical Hardware

We recommend that you use a Raspberry Pi 4b with 1G of ram or a newer Raspberry Pi 5 based system. Note that the PikaReader system does not require a lot of ram, so a 1G or 2G system is more than adequate. The system does not also require a lot of CPU. At full load with around 1000 raw reads/s the system will use one of the four cores on a Raspberry Pi 4b.

Operating System

For the purposes of this project, we are assuming that the operating system is installed on a standard SD flash card. This will result in a system that takes about 30 seconds to boot but is generally a lot simpler to setup than a "faster" SSD based Pi 5 with an NVMe based SSD on a hat.

Start by downloading the official Rasbperry Pi Imager to your system.

Insert a 32G or larger SD card into your system. We highly recommend that you purchase a "high endurance" card from a reputable source to avoid (e.g. NOT any vendor that co-mingles inventory. B&H is usually a good source.) Note that a 32G card will hold over a million chip reads.

Choose the Trixie Lite OS under the "Raspberry Pi OS (other)" section. It is usually listed as "Raspberry Pi OS (64-bit) Lite (Debian 13 Trixie)" or something similar.

Before clicking the Write option, the imager will prompt you to apply OS customization settings. This is where you can set things like the hostname, username / password, timezone, and optionally configure the wireless lan if you are not using ethernet.

Full walkthroughs are available on the internet. See https://raspberrytips.com/install-raspbian-raspberry-pi/ for an example.

Filesystem Journaling

This unit is battery operated and the system has no "nice" off button. The typical way to power off the system is the computer equivalent of a a rug pull. The default Debian Trixie system uses the EXT4 filesystem and enabling journaling will effectively mitigate any risk of critical data loss in the event of a sudden power off of the system. Once you have the system up and running, it is highly recommended that you enable filesystem journaling as follows:

  • Add "noatime,data=journal,commit=1" to root partition for /etc/fstab
  • Add "rootflags=data=journal" to end of config line of /boot/firmware/cmdline.txt

GPS Setup

Setup of the Adafruit Ultimate GPS hat is best covered in this article: https://austinsnerdythings.com/2025/02/14/revisiting-microsecond-accurate-ntp-for-raspberry-pi-with-gps-pps-in-2025/

Note that you will need to pay attention to the fact that the GPS hat uses GPIO pin #4 for the PPS signal. also make sure you disable the serial console with the "sudo raspi-config noinit do_serial_cons 1" command and reboot before proceeding.

Reader Networking Setup

It is highly recommended to use a dedicated USB Network Adapter to connect to the reader and place any readers on this dedicated connection. This way all of the readers can be configured with the exact same IP address and not interfere with any other PikaReader units on your network.

Upon adding a USB network adapter, the system will create a "Wired connection 2" network profile. Configure this network with a static IP address and disable ipv6 as follows:

  • nmcli con mod 'Wired connection 2' ipv4.address 192.0.2.1/24
  • nmcli con modify "Wired connection 2" ipv6.method disabled

This will setup the network to use the 192.0.2.1 "TEST-NET-1 " address range. This range is almost never used for any internal uses; network admins almost always pick one of the more common RFC1918 ranges (10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, and 192.168.0.0/16) so this should help avoid any routing issues.

Configure your first reader with an IP address of 192.0.2.10 with the same class-c subnet (a "/24" or 255.255.255.0) and a default router of "192.0.2.1". You can increment this IP as needed if you have more than one reader (.11, .12, and so on).

If you have multiple readers, you will need to install a small switch to place between the dedicated NIC and the readers. Optionally, you can connect the main NIC to a managed switch and setup a dedicated and isolated vlan for the readers. This is a bit beyond the scope of this guide, but google or ChatGPT / Claude should be your friends.

Enabling I2C

The LCD, INA237 voltage meter, and PiRTC real time clock make use of the I2C system. Enable the system and install the needed software with the following commands:

  • sudo raspi-config nonint do_i2c 0
  • sudo apt install i2c-tools

Prepare for the installation of PikaReader and PikaReader4Pi by installing the required system packages

  • sudo apt-get install openjdk-25-jdk
  • sudo apt-get install python3-websockets python3-tomlkit python3-smbus2 python3-rpi-lgpio

Setup the RTC (Highly Recommended)

If you purchased the recommended PiRTC based on the DS3231 TCOX, follow the setup guide at https://learn.adafruit.com/adding-a-real-time-clock-to-raspberry-pi We highly recommend that you purchase the one designed to go on top of the GPIO header at https://www.adafruit.com/product/4282 to save yourself some headaches. Don't forget the CR1220 coin cell battery.

Wireless Network Setup

While the wired network connection is easy, a wireless network makes race day setup a bit faster and easier. If you want to

Step 1: Set the wifi region (if you didn't do it already)

sudo raspi-config nonint do_wifi_country US

Step 2: Setup the wireless network

Run the following command as root:

nmcli connection add \
type wifi \
ifname wlan0 \
con-name "<Network Name>" \
ssid "<Network Name>" \
wifi-sec.key-mgmt wpa-psk \
wifi-sec.psk "Password"

nmcli connection modify "<Network Name>" connection.autoconnect yes

Step 3: Setup the system to disable the wireless network if you connect an ethernet cable to the system:

Create a file at /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/99-wifi-exclusive.sh with the following script:

# The system device name for your primary interface
PRIMARY_INTERFACE="eth0"

INTERFACE="$1"
ACTION="$2"

if [ "$INTERFACE" = "$PRIMARY_INTERFACE" ]; then
    case "$ACTION" in
        up)
            # Primary wired connection is active -> Kill all Wi-Fi radio
            nmcli radio wifi off
            ;;
        down)
            # Primary wired connection went down -> Turn Wi-Fi radio back on
            nmcli radio wifi on
            ;;
    esac
fi

Run the following two commands as root:

  • chown root:root /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/99-wifi-exclusive.sh
  • chmod 744 /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/99-wifi-exclusive.sh

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