Test SW Image

The preferred installation method for the Portsdown software involves downloading the Raspbian Jessie operating system, unzipping it, writing it to an SD card and then running an installation script to download and install all the Portsdown software. This method ensures that the latest version of all the software packages is installed. The instructions for this "normal" installation are detailed on this web page: https://github.com/BritishAmateurTelevisionClub/rpidatv.

An alternative method, which does not require an enduring internet connection, and does not rely on any 3rd party websites (only the BATC Website), is to download and install a complete disk image of the Portsdown software. The disadvantage of this method is that the initial download is very large, and that the software will not be the latest version. Due to the work involved in preparing the image, new images will only be published once very 6 months or so.

Here are the instructions for this method:

1. Download this very large (767MB) zip file: File:201801061.zip

2. Using 7zip, or a similar program, unzip the file. The file extracted should be "201801061.img" and be 1,902,592 KB in size.

3. Using a program such as Win 32 Disk Imager, write the .img file to your SD Card.

4. Eject the SD Card from your PC, and put it in your Raspberry Pi (RPi) and boot up.

5. Using the PC, log in to the RPi by SSH using a program such as Putty. If you have a touch screen fitted, the IP address will be displayed on the touchscreen. If not, you can usually simply enter raspberrypi as the Host Name. If this does not work, you will need to use a a program such as "Advanced IP Scanner" (http://filehippo.com/download_advanced_ip_scanner/) to find the IP address.

6. Once you have logged in (username pi, password raspberry) the Portsdown console menu should display.. Select page down, enter, and then down arrow twice to highlight "Exit to Linux" and press enter.

7. At the command prompt, type

sudo raspi-config

and press enter. You should see the "Raspberry Pi Software Configuration Tool" menu. Use the down arrow to get to option 7, "Advanced Options" and press enter. "Expand Filesystem" should already be highlighted. Press enter again. You should get a message that the "Root partition has been resized". Press enter and you will get back to the main menu. Press tab twice, and press enter to "reboot now".

8. After the reboot, log in again and you should see the Portsdown Console Menu. You can now configure your Portsdown transmitter for use.

9. Note that this software image is "frozen in time" at version 201801061. The image published here will not be updated very often as creation of the image and upload takes most of a day. However, once created, the card can be updated to the latest version using the update function in the setup menu.