I’m a total newbie. Last week I was trying to purchase a raspberry pie at the local bakery, today I’m trying to download the correct webcontrol file and unzip it.
I have a Raspberry Pi 4 with 128Gb on a micro SD card. I purchased the SD card on eBay with NOOBS but found it didn’t work so I deleted the files and installed the OS myself. I’m typing on it now to my surprise and none of this seemed difficult until I tried to get WebControl loaded.
The problem is I am not sure what I am doing with getting the Webcontrol, or should I say, it isn’t working and I need a peer check on what I may be doing wrong. Here is what I have done:
went to github and double clicked on a file named webcontrol–94-rpi-singledirectory.tar.gz I chose this one because it had rpi in the name and I made an assumption it was for the Raspberry Pi.
-after double clicking on it, the following file download onto my rpi-4: 2020-02-13-webcontrolcnc-buster-lite-0.1.1.zip I guess I’m confused as to how the name changed from what I clicked on??
-I then purused the interwebs for hours on end to learn how to unzip it. To unzip, I did the following: 1. clicked on acessories>archive>then I clicked on something (can’t remember exactly) and was able to see a list of files and I highlighted the zip file noted above. 2. opened the “action” tab and selected “extract”. I’m new to Raspberry Pi so I probably did this 473 times (expecting to see a progress bar) before I noticed on the bottom of the window a note saying it was extracting the file(s). After a couple minutes, the note on the bottom went back to the pre-extraction note stating simply- 1 file selected, 2.3GB.
I wait for the skys to part, a song to play…something. I close the window to find a zip file still on my top header bar, nothing anywhere to indicate Webcontrol is present and waiting my attention. Did I mention I deleted and re-downloaded this file and possibly others many times with the same results? Yes, the classic definition of insanity and why I finally made this post.
Is Raspberry Pi really this difficult? I’m a mechanical genius but NOT a computer genius by any means. I have searched this forum for similar issues and either nobody has had this problem or I have no idea what anyone is talking about with all the computer jargon, and I suspect there may even be a little international computer slang thrown in for good measure to really throw me off. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Hopefully I simply grabbed the wrong file.
Thank you in advance
the buster zip file is an image that you use to write to the sd card for the raspberry pi. It is all ready to go if you load/write that image on your SD card, then start the raspberry pi and it is all set up and ready to go for you. No install, just image.
Thanks Orob for helping. I will be honest, I am struggling with this term “image”. All my searches on the topic bring me to the Raspberry Imager which if I understand correctly, flashes the SD card with the OS of your choice. However, the term image, as you used it has me confused.
So when I double clicked on the zip file in github, the buster zip file placed itself on my upper toolbar of my raspberry. The only memory my raspberry has is the sd card. Is this file not on my sd card if it shows up like this on my monitor when I start the raspberry? And if it is on the sd card, then why did it not “open” or something?
When you said “no install, just image”, do you mean it is like a hyper-link? If so, mine is not taking me anywhere. Sorry but I chose no judgement as the category cause I know I’m probably annoyingly ignorant in this area. Thanks again for your help.
Remove the SD card and put it in your laptop. ignore any prompts to format the drive, but note the drive letter because you will need it for the image when it writes.
Use the raspberry pi imaging program. This is the program that writes the operating system to your SD card for the pi to load an operating system. Go to the bottom of the menu to select “use custom”
then select the image file name you unzipped.
once you have the file selected, make life easy on yourself by setting up your wifi settings. press the key combination of “CTRL SHIFT X” and a menu will pop up and allow you to type in your wifi settings, set your location and time zone.
Once that is done, you select the drive letter of the SD card and write it. Then pull the SD card out and put in raspberry pi and turn it on. It should just work. You will need to find the IP address of the raspberry pi and type that into the browser with “:5000” at the end so webcontrol will show up. If you don’t know the IP address, plug the pi into a TV with HDMI and watch the boot text until you see the wifi start and the IP address should show up. usually it is a 192.168.x.xx number.
no judgement, just trying to be brief and concise. There is no problem with the request for more detailed information. If you need more info, just say so. I don’t have the imager in front of me so I didn’t put in more details, but my friend google can help you out as well if you search for “how to set up wifi on raspberry pi imager” or “hidden menu on raspberry pi imager.” you got this.
So I must be doing something wrong.
Since there was no unzipped image in my PC, I downloaded the one with the rpi in its name but it would not extract. I tried the singlefile windows file and this appeared in my downloads:
I selected this file, did the wifi setup as you said, then selected the sd card and clicked the “write” button. At that point I get a warning that the file will erase all previous information (I assume my OS).
Ok there are two different things going on here and you can choose to do either,but you do not need to do both:
pull SD card, download the buster lite image with webcontrol on it. Unzipping should give an image file on your windows machine that you then write to the SD card (first file in your first post ->> 2020-02-13-webcontrolcnc-buster-lite-0.1.1.zip).
OR
download the webcontrol single directory zipped file onto the pi that is already running and then
gzip -xzcf filename
to get a folder with webcontrol in it. You run it by
cd webcontrol
and then
./webcontrol
But you don’t need to do both and it won’t work if you do the #1 steps with the #2 file or vice versa as you have attempted already. You are so close. There is a step by step here.
Well it definately does delete the OS on the card. Not sure what that is all about but I’ll try method #2 and use google, etc. before I ask for more help. Thanks
It will replace the OS on the SD card. That is normal. It will replace it with raspberry pi OS “buster” so it will be ready to run when you plug it in. If you have other critical programs on that card you can buy another SD card and use the new one ( 8 gig or 16 will work fine). The second way is a lot more setup commands to make it work. The re imaging of the operating system on the pi only takes a few minutes. Just be sure you have selected the SD card drive letter and NOT your PC hard drive because that would be apocalyptic.
So I’m confused (doesn’t take much with computer software). If I purchase another SD card and load “buster” on it, and I have the SD card with “buster” on it when I start the Raspberry Pi, as I did when it overwrote my OS system, how will it work if there is no OS for the Pi? Even if I have 2 SD cards and one has “buster” on it and the other the OS, how does it work if there is not OS on the raspberry when I start the raspberry up with the “buster” card in it? I did that last night and I have no idea what the Raspberry pi was doing but I had a black screen with a raspberry logo in the upper left corner and a QR code in the upper right. I scanned the QR code with my iphone and it took me to the raspberry site to get an OS. I’m starting to wonder if you meant that I should save the “buster” program on a usb flashdrive and leave the sd card in the raspberry so it can start up and then extract the “buster”?
Oh, another question I have is in regards to the wifi for webcontrol. The reason I choose to go with a raspberry is to keep my laptop out of the shop and all the dust. Do I need to enter all the wifi information if the raspberry itself is connected to my wifi for internet but I will have a USB cord from the raspberry to the motor controller circuit board?
I’m apparently missing some step in all this or not understanding what I am supposed to do? Again, so sorry for being a computer dork.
So I’m confused (doesn’t take much with computer software). If I purchase
another SD card and load “buster” on it, and I have the SD card with “buster”
on it when I start the Raspberry Pi, as I did when it overwrote my OS system,
how will it work if there is no OS for the Pi? Even if I have 2 SD cards and
one has “buster” on it and the other the OS, how does it work if there is not
OS on the raspberry when I start the raspberry up with the “buster” card in
it? I did that last night and I have no idea what the Raspberry pi was doing
but I had a black screen with a raspberry logo in the upper left corner and a
QR code in the upper right. I scanned the QR code with my iphone and it took
me to the raspberry site to get an OS. I’m starting to wonder if you meant
that I should save the “buster” program on a usb flashdrive and leave the sd
card in the raspberry so it can start up and then extract the “buster”?
the webcontrol SD image includes the OS, so you just write that onto one SD card
and put it in the Pi. Instead of having you install the OS and then load
WebControl, people have simplified the task by doing it for you and giving you
just the image that you can install. It is possible to install it on a ‘normal
OS’ image, but it’s more work (and unless you are doing something odd, not any
different in the end)
Oh, another question I have is in regards to the wifi for webcontrol. The
reason I choose to go with a raspberry is to keep my laptop out of the shop
and all the dust. Do I need to enter all the wifi information if the
raspberry itself is connected to my wifi for internet but I will have a USB
cord from the raspberry to the motor controller circuit board?
yes, the Pi needs a network connection (at least enough of a network connection
for your laptop to talk to it, it doesn’t need to reach the Internet), but the
Pi does need the USB connection to the arduino that the firmware gets installed
on (which is what actually moves the machine)
open the imaging program and click choose OS then custom:
select the file:
once that is selected, select the “choose storage” button and select the SD card letter
Set up with hidden menu by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + X:
at the top you can choose to save this for just this install or as settings for every image you write.
enable ssh
set password for pi user
scroll down and set up wifi and locale:
check the boxes, enter the information for your location, wifi country, wifi name, and then press SAVE
the webcontrol SD image includes the OS, so you just write that onto one SD card
and put it in the Pi. Instead of having you install the OS and then load
WebControl, people have simplified the task by doing it for you and giving you
just the image that you can install
OK so when I installed the “buster” webcontrol and it erased my OS, it should have then started up my pi when I powered it up with the sd card in it, correct? Cause it went for several minutes with just the raspberry logo in upper left corner and the QR code for obtaining the OS imager in the upper right corner. Should I have walked away and let it run longer to upload everything? Was I on the correct path but didn’t give it enough time?
Thanks so much for all the help.
yeah I was using a 128gb card but switched now to a 32gb card I had in my Roku thinking there was something wrong with it.
I re-did the steps with your instructions you sent where I open the hidden menu and set my password and wifi, etc. I actually did that procedure 3 times, checking the settings in the hidden menu as you instructed and each time it momentarily starts with the colors in the 4 corners of the square which I believe is a good sign but then starts listing lines of computer instruction, most of which say something like “checking this or that” and most but not all have a green OK in the left side, then it stops and nothing more happens.
I’m thinking maybe I need to try getting a different image of buster to try, perhaps it is corrupt?
