install notes for https://github.com/hansehv/SamplerBox on a raspberry pi 5
hello all, this is a place for me to organize how i installed hansehv's most recent version of SamplerBox on a Raspberry Pi 5 (i think it was compatible with up till RPI3 or 4).
long story short, there is a couple of dependencies which are a bit finnicky to install, and i modified some of the code to get rid of depreciated stuff.
you can start with regular raspberry pi 5 image, i used the instructions here to get an RT-PREEMPT version (lower latency). it's quite a bit of extra compiling to make the image https://github.com/remusmp/rpi-rt-kernel
i suggest you read this file in Raw, when you read it on githubs normal website it eliminates a lot of carriage returns and smushes things onto one line
step by step of the actual samplerbox install:
making virtual environment mkdir 3rdtry cd 3rdtry python3 -m venv argh source argh/bin/activate
cloning samplerbox git clone https://github.com/hansehv/SamplerBox cd SamplerBox
dependencies pip3 install setuptools pip3 install Cython pip3 install setuptools pip3 install numpy python3 setup.py build_ext --inplace
**rtmidi2 problems, i think maybe i just ended up replacing this file with the one i have in this repo but i'm keeping this part in case it actually was useful **
git clone https://github.com/hansehv/rtmidi2 cd rtmidi2 python3 setup.py install (****((this does a compileerror)) need to compile the interface.so file g++ -Wall -Wextra -O -ansi -pedantic -fpermissive -shared interface.cpp -o interface.so -fPIC this has the added -fPIC which was an error thrown when used without git clone https://github.com/hansehv/python-midi cd python-midi python3 setup.py install pip install git+https://github.com/hansehv/python-midi
***error modules/smfplayer.py", line 52, in AttributeError: module 'midi.sequencer' has no attribute 'SequencerWrite' ** i think i just commented that line out.. maybe i don<t have smfplayer working i dunno **
pip3 install sounddevice pip3 install pyalsaaudio pip install rpi.gpio
** FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'config/controls.csv' ** **need to rename Controls.csv to controls.csv **
sudo apt install liblgpio-dev pip3 install rpi-lgpio
*issues with sounds.py (chunk problems) i saved all the fixes of sounds.py, i'm a bad person, i used chatGPT to help me fix it. strangely it seems to still use Chunk, but works for me. feel free to troubleshoot further, basically chunk is a depreciated library, it<s been replaced with waveread. long story short use my sounds.py and should work
** replaced a ton of stuff in rtmidi2.pyx i think i also used ChatGPT to "fix" it, see attached file .. this is just to get stuff running a better programmer than me needs to take a look at any changes. i'm using samplerbox with GPIO inputs and not midi so i'm not even sure if midi works properly, i would assume so but thought i would put full disclosure here**
that should be it. test it before you do this part, the last part is to make it auto-boot the code when you boot the RPI you can run it within the venv without activating the venv, in fact i think it's the only way to get it to run properly on boot, so try out this way of running it (no need to activate venv): /home/pi/3rdtry/argh/bin/python3 /home/pi/3rdtry/SamplerBox/samplerbox.py (this uses the python3 program in the venv directly)
for auto boot
Step 1: Create a systemd Service File
Open a new service file using sudo nano:
bash
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/my_script.service
Paste the following configuration, replacing the placeholder paths and username with your specific details [1]: ini
[Unit] Description=My Script Service After=network.target
[Service] User=pi WorkingDirectory=/home/pi/my_project ExecStart=ExecStart=sudo chrt --fifo 99 /home/pi/3rdtry/argh/bin/python3 /home/pi/3rdtry/SamplerBox/samplerbox.py R Restart=always
[Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target
User=: Replace pi with your Raspberry Pi username.
WorkingDirectory=: The absolute path to your project directory.
ExecStart=: The absolute path to your venv's Python executable followed by the absolute path to your script [1].
After=network.target: Ensures the network is ready before attempting to start the script, which is important for IoT or network-dependent applications [1].
Step 3: Enable and Start the Service
Save and exit the nano editor (Ctrl+O, Enter, Ctrl+X).
Reload systemd to recognize the new service:
bash
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
Enable the service to start automatically at boot: bash
sudo systemctl enable my_script.service
Start the service immediately without rebooting: bash
sudo systemctl start my_script.service
Step 4: Verify the Service Status You can check if the script is running correctly at any time using this command: bash
sudo systemctl status my_script.service
if you want to stop it use systemctl stop my_script.service
** the above uses chrt --fifo 99 for running the program, since i'm using RT-PREEMPT, it will set real-time scheduling policy (essential if you want low latency with RT-PREEMPT). if you're just using regular RPI5, just run it with /home/pi/3rdtry/argh/bin/python3 /home/pi/3rdtry/SamplerBox/samplerbox.py .. you might need a . before the above line i never remember that stuff **
hope that helps, feel free to add any notes of things that need to be changed / explained better