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Software Installation

Table of Contents

Prebuilt OS Image

The recommended way to setup and use this project is with the provided prebuilt Raspberry Pi OS Image.

The provided Pi OS image is simply the stock Raspberry Pi OS Lite image with all the dependencies pre-installed, and it is suitable for offline installations. Simply download the file and use Raspberry Pi Imager to write the image to your microSD card.

If you don’t want to use the prebuilt image, see Manual Installation.

Pre-configure Wi-Fi

You can configure your Wi-Fi network before booting your Raspberry Pi, so that it will connect to your network automatically on first boot. After you have flashed the custom image to your microSD card, reconnect the card to your computer, and open up the file named rpi_power_monitor-wpa-supplicant.txt inside the boot folder.

If you have a standard WPA2 protected wireless network, find the section beginning with WPA/WPA2 secured and uncomment all of the lines. Then, add your network name (SSID) and password (psk), leaving the quotation marks.

Example
# WPA/WPA2 secured
network={
  ssid="My WiFi Name"
  psk="topsecretpassword"
}

Next, scroll down to set the country code. A few examples are there - just make sure only one is uncommented, and leave the rest commented out.

Save and close the file. The microSD card is now ready to be used in your Raspberry Pi.

The custom image is command-line only (no desktop). You should be familiar with using SSH and basic command line instructions.

First Boot

If you followed the pre-configure wifi section above, your Pi should connect to your wireless network automatically when it starts up. You’ll probably need to take a look at your router’s client table to find the Pi’s IP address, or use a scanning tool like Fing, Angry IP Scanner, or Nmap. If you can’t find your Pi’s IP address, or don’t know how to use SSH, connect a keyboard and monitor to the Pi. (Here’s the official Raspberry Pi documentation for connecting with SSH)

The SSH credentials for the custom OS image have been left as default (username: pi password: raspberry).

Update the Power Monitor software

Run the following commands to make sure the power monitor software is up to date after your first boot.

cd ~/rpi_power_monitor
sed -i 's|+refs/tags/v0.3.*:refs/tags/v0.3.*|+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*|g' .git/config
git fetch
git checkout master

To continue the setup, see the Configuration page for the major release that you are using. The latest release is v0.3.1 and its configuration page is here:

Go to v0.3.1 Configuration