Table of Contents
Building an rPi for CumulusMX
These pages cover building (or rebuilding) an rPi as a host for CumulusMX.
It is based on first hand experience of building rPi4's and now an rPi5 running the latest rPi OS - bookworm.
At the end of this page you will have an rPi ready to install CumulusMX. If you have already completed all these tasks, visit: Install CumulusMX.
Setting up third party uploads, creating a local web server, setting up remote access and uploading your data to a public website is covered in the ai section of this wiki
Getting Started
Before you begin you'll need:
- An rPi with a reliable power supply. This is essential as the rPi is vary particular about the quality of its power and will be unreliable otherwise.
- A MicroSD card - anything bigger than 8GB. My preference is 64GB but that's because I do a lot of development work on the rPi's I use.
- Software to burn the rPi OS image onto the MicroSD card. This depends on your main computer OS but my preference is for the Raspberry Pi Imager.
- You will obviously also need a card reader that attaches to your main computer.
- An HDMI monitor and suitable cable to connect to your rPi
- A Keyboard and mouse that can connect to your rPi.
Step 1
Burn the OS onto the MicroSD Card
This is done on your main computer.
- Select the correct rPi device, either rPi5, rPi4 or rPiZero 2.
- Choose the correct OS. This is dependant on the device you selected above, I would recommend rPi OS 64-bit with Desktop.
- Finally choose the storage device onto which to burn the image. Take care to select the card in the reader and not any other hard disc used on your computer!
- Click on the Next button and you will be given the option to 'Use OS customisation?. I strongly recommend doing so as it will save a lot of time later.
- Finally you can proceed to burn the image. It will take some time unless you are using a very fast computer.
This gives you the opportunity to enter a hostnameWhen you are done, take the MicroSD card out of the reader and insert it into the card slot on the bottom of your rPi.
Now is the time to connect your rPi to your Monitor, keyboard & mouse and finally some power and turn it on.
It will take a little time the first time you switch on as the SD card and rPi fully configure themselves.
Step 2
Preparing for CumulusMX
Before installing any new software on your rPi, it is good practice to make sure it is fully up-to-date. Do this using the following commands entered separately in a terminal window.
sudo apt update sudo apt full-upgrade -y
This will again take some time as there are likely to be a significant number up updates required
Step 3
Install .NET8
As CumulusMX is primarily developed using Microsoft® based languages, in order to run it on an rPi, you need to install .NET8© which provides the necessary framework.
Many of these will already be installed and up-to-date but it is always wise to check.
You now need to ensure that all the supporting libraries are installed and up-to-date. Use the following command:
sudo apt install libc6 libgcc-s1 libgssapi-krb5-2 libssl1.1 libstdc++6 zlib1g libicu72
At this stage, it is well worth entering the command:
sudo apt autoremove -y
to remove any unwanted packages that have been superseded by those we have installed
We are now ready to install .NET8. Although I have included all the required commands in one code box, you should enter each one separately on a new line.
wget https://dot.net/v1/dotnet-install.sh chmod +x dotnet-install.sh sudo ./dotnet-install.sh -c LTS --install-dir /usr/share/dotnet --runtime dotnet sudo echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/usr/share/dotnet' | sudo tee -a /etc/profile.d/dotnet.sh > /dev/null sudo chmod +x /etc/profile.d/dotnet.sh export PATH=$PATH:/usr/share/dotnet dotnet --info
The final command tests that it has been installed correctly and should display information about the installation.