Raspberry Pi + JMRI

[melmerby]

Hi all

I'm sure there must be a topic for this but after a quick search I drew a blank.

How do you install JMRI on a RPi?

Mine is a Model B 3+ It's all up to date with the latest updates.

I thought it would be an easy Linux package install but it appears not so.

JMRI talk about a custom image. What's that all about?

 

I want it so that I can run Decoderpro with a Sprog as a small stand-alone unit

 

I'm sure I previously did it on a standard Linux (Kubuntu) install and it was very straightforward.

(I'm used to Windows where it is: Download> Right click file to self extract/install, a couple of OK/Next on the screen and it's up and running!)

[Nigelcliffe]

Look up Steve Todd's JMRI build on the internet.  

 

Its a complete build of operating system, JMRI, and all the configurations done for you.  Just download the file, pop it onto a SD card, put it in the PI and turn on.   Really is that simple. 

 

Steve's site documents what he has done if you want to tweak further.  

 

 

 

- Nigel

[Phil Himsworth]

The way i did it if I recall correctly was nothing more than downloading the .tgz file and extracting it into a folder called /opt/jmri.

 

Then just run DecoderPro from there.

[KingEdwardII]

3 hours ago, melmerby said:

JMRI talk about a custom image. What's that all about?

You don't need to do that. "Steve Todd's JMRI build" is one of these custom images. Personally, I think that is too complex and assumes that you're only using the Pi to run JMRI - not the case with my Pi 400, for sure. 

 

What I did was to simply install the JMRI software onto my existing Raspbian installation. This is straightforward.

 

There is a .tgz file for JMRI 4.20 for the Pi - JMRI.4.20+Rc7ba8249b.tgz

 

Download it and then unpack it to a suitable folder: /home/pi/JMRI in my case.

 

You need Java to run jMRI but you should find Java already installed if you're using Raspbian. Mine was Java 11.

You can check this using a terminal session - type "java --version" and it should respond with the identity of the Java you have installed.

You can add a Startup Icon into the main Pi menu for JMRI, or you can start JMRI from the command line.

 

Yours, Mike.

[melmerby]

13 hours ago, Phil Himsworth said:

The way i did it if I recall correctly was nothing more than downloading the .tgz file and extracting it into a folder called /opt/jmri.

 

Then just run DecoderPro from there.

 

11 hours ago, KingEdwardII said:

You don't need to do that. "Steve Todd's JMRI build" is one of these custom images. Personally, I think that is too complex and assumes that you're only using the Pi to run JMRI - not the case with my Pi 400, for sure. 

 

What I did was to simply install the JMRI software onto my existing Raspbian installation. This is straightforward.

 

There is a .tgz file for JMRI 4.20 for the Pi - JMRI.4.20+Rc7ba8249b.tgz

 

Download it and then unpack it to a suitable folder: /home/pi/JMRI in my case.

 

You need Java to run jMRI but you should find Java already installed if you're using Raspbian. Mine was Java 11.

You can check this using a terminal session - type "java --version" and it should respond with the identity of the Java you have installed.

You can add a Startup Icon into the main Pi menu for JMRI, or you can start JMRI from the command line.

 

Yours, Mike.

RThanks chaps

 

I did exactly that.

Downloaded the latest file from JMRI (ver 4.22 now)

Extracted it with tar command and hey presto JMRI on the Pi.

 

IIRC that's how I did a desktop install to Kubuntu some years ago.

[KingEdwardII]

1 hour ago, melmerby said:

ver 4.22 now

Thanks for the reminder that I need to do an upgrade to the latest release.

 

I've been heads-down on signals recently and haven't been keeping up to date with other stuff.

 

Mike.

[Nigelcliffe]

Read release notes carefully if doing signalling / logix things before going to 4.22.   There seem to be a few issues in some logix areas.  And, to further complicate things, 4.23.2 introduces a new logix engine...

 

- Nigel

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, Nigelcliffe said:

Read release notes carefully if doing signalling / logix things before going to 4.22.   There seem to be a few issues in some logix areas.  And, to further complicate things, 4.23.2 introduces a new logix engine...

 

- Nigel

Hi Nigel

I only want to for my Decoder Pro database, so that I can "chip" locos and do some basic settings away from the main PC.

I use a Sprog for that but don't always want to use the main PC.

 

Annoyingly the RPi ready touch screen display I bought 3 years ago when I was intending to do this with a PC Duino has just got t*ts up!

I gave up on the PCDuino a few days ago when that started playing up so I switched to the RPi I bought a while back and now the display has gone pear shaped as well

 

 

 

 

[Nigelcliffe]

1 hour ago, melmerby said:

Hi Nigel

I only want to for my Decoder Pro database, so that I can "chip" locos and do some basic settings away from the main PC.

I use a Sprog for that but don't always want to use the main PC.

 

Annoyingly the RPi ready touch screen display I bought 3 years ago when I was intending to do this with a PC Duino has just got t*ts up!

I gave up on the PCDuino a few days ago when that started playing up so I switched to the RPi I bought a while back and now the display has gone pear shaped as well

 

Sounds like an attack of the gremlins at your end.   

 

DecoderPro side is fine on 4.22.   
It was the comment about "signalling" which often means rules and logix inside JMRI which might cause issues. 

 

 

 

- Nigel

[melmerby]

3 hours ago, Nigelcliffe said:

 

Sounds like an attack of the gremlins at your end. 

 

- Nigel

Yes, definitely.

I've now got a new small display for the Pi on order coming by Thursday.

The PCduino will just be scrapped.

 

Also In the last week both a 25W & a 60W soldering iron failed (new elements not available)

The 25W (Adcola) was probably 30+ years old and has had a lot of use. It was my old BT iron and I left there in 1994!

The 60W was one of those cheap Chinese market stall types which don't last long.

Fortunately Rapidonline had got two suitable replacements (both by Antex), which arrived this morning.

 

 

[KingEdwardII]

2 hours ago, melmerby said:

I've now got a new small display for the Pi

I've got a touch screen display on my Pi 400 - but small it ain't. I went for a 22 inch to get a big size display of my layout that I could use directly for switching points and signals just using fingers. The screen cost a lot more than the Pi...

 

I can display the same layout panel using Engine Driver on my Galaxy Note smartphone (6.3" screen) , but it is tricky to use successfully without the stylus.

 

Yours,  Mike.

[Nigelcliffe]

4 minutes ago, KingEdwardII said:

I've got a touch screen display on my Pi 400 - but small it ain't. I went for a 22 inch to get a big size display of my layout that I could use directly for switching points and signals just using fingers. The screen cost a lot more than the Pi...

 

I can display the same layout panel using Engine Driver on my Galaxy Note smartphone (6.3" screen) , but it is tricky to use successfully without the stylus.

 

Yours,  Mike.

 

The trick Mike, is to write some new panels, using the panel editor, with graphics optimised for the Galaxy's screen size (which may require drawing icons and backgrounds as PNG files using a graphics editing package to be used on the panel).  Then set the settings in JMRI's Webserver to only offer those to WebClients.    New panel will then operate (and display) key data from the layout.     
Might need more than one to cover the layout, but that's OK as a technique.   Graphics can be adjusted to cope with finger size, viewing distance, etc..    

 

- Nigel

[melmerby]

12 hours ago, KingEdwardII said:

I've got a touch screen display on my Pi 400 - but small it ain't. I went for a 22 inch to get a big size display of my layout that I could use directly for switching points and signals just using fingers. The screen cost a lot more than the Pi...

 

I can display the same layout panel using Engine Driver on my Galaxy Note smartphone (6.3" screen) , but it is tricky to use successfully without the stylus.

 

Yours,  Mike.

The new one (10") isn't a touch screen display as I don't like touch screens anyway!

It'll use a keyboard & mouse as normal.

[KingEdwardII]

12 hours ago, Nigelcliffe said:

The trick Mike, is to write some new panels,

Nigel,

 

Yes, I realise that I could go down that path, but I'm not convinced yet that I want to use the smartphone for controlling turnouts & signals. The smartphone is great for controlling locos - and I've been able to control multiple at the same time on my phone.

 

I really like the big touch screen for handling the turnouts and I am currently working on the signalling to enable the same thing - but I am starting from scratch (signals, servos, controllers, JMRI control, the lot) so it is taking quite a while. I am beginning to understand why folks are happy to shell out >£50 a piece for the Dapol motorized GWR junction signals . "Built it yourself" using the MSE kits I hope will bring them in at less than £20 a piece, but my lack of skill means it is taking a long time.

 

23 minutes ago, melmerby said:

I don't like touch screens anyway

Well, I find them delightful, operating with a Mk1 finger - and no scrabbling around to find the mouse and a surface to operate it on when I'm trying to flip some turnouts... worth every penny to me.

 

Yours,  Mike.

 

 

[melmerby]

13 minutes ago, KingEdwardII said:

 

Well, I find them delightful, operating with a Mk1 finger - and no scrabbling around to find the mouse and a surface to operate it on when I'm trying to flip some turnouts... worth every penny to me.

 

Yours,  Mike.

 

 

Unfortunately my early version Mk1 finger isn't liked by touch screens and I have a job getting any to work properly.*

They either don't respond at all or two adjacent cells are activated at once.

 

The Decoderpro/Sprog setup will be a separate dedicated unit away from the layout computer.

 

*It's one reason I don't like mobile phones although I do have a relatively modern smartphone!

It takes three or four attempts of "swipe right" to get to the menu screen, other people seem to be able to do it first time.

[Hroth]

16 hours ago, melmerby said:

Yes, definitely.

I've now got a new small display for the Pi on order coming by Thursday.

The PCduino will just be scrapped.

 

Also In the last week both a 25W & a 60W soldering iron failed (new elements not available)

The 25W (Adcola) was probably 30+ years old and has had a lot of use. It was my old BT iron and I left there in 1994!

The 60W was one of those cheap Chinese market stall types which don't last long.

Fortunately Rapidonline had got two suitable replacements (both by Antex), which arrived this morning.

 

 

 

I got a 10" basic screen for my Pi4, its handier than anything larger and I don't like running the Pi headless, I'd rather see whats going on!  As for soldering irons, I had to retire my dads 25W Antex because it had woodworm in the handle*...  My 15w Antex is older than I care to admit but still going strong, and I've a post-woodworm 25W too.

 

As for touchscreens, I use an "obsolete" 10" Alba tablet running Engine Driver for controlling locos.

 

* Other factors were dodgy wiring and elderly bakelite fittings.

[KingEdwardII]

47 minutes ago, melmerby said:

my early version Mk1 finger isn't liked by touch screens and I have a job getting any to work properly.

Keith,

 

I can sympathise with that - but that is why I splashed out about £200 on my 22" screen - with that, I make the active areas about the same size as my fingertip and keep them well separated so that accidentally selecting the wrong one isn't going to happen (unless I've been at the cider  ). 

 

With the Pi it is basically mimicing a mouse and it is basically select & click with none of the swipe or drag stuff to worry about like you get on a smartphone.

 

Yours, Mike.

[melmerby]

A quickie for you RPi experts

When I downloaded and extracted JMRI all the files end up with basic default Pi icons.

Is it possible to assign custom icons to the files, as happens with Windows?

E.g. each of the modules Decoder Pro & Panel Pro has a unique icon.

 

Edited March 23, 2021 by melmerby

[melmerby]

An update on this.

First a hiccup. The RPi wouldn't boot up. I was puzzled for a while but noticed the SD card was getting very very hot. Looks like it had gone t*ts up!

I had another handy but had to load the OS and other stuff onto it.

I Downloaded JMRI (Debian version) and put it a Folder "JMRI" I then extracted it "tar -zxcf JMRI" and it duly extracted, except it doesn't seem to have fully extracted and when clicking on "DecoderPro" it does not start.

i have dowloaded Libre Office as well and had the same problem, there are a load of zipped folders ending ".deb"

 

It's funny, I had Linux mastered a few years back but haven't used it for a while and seem to forgotten most of it!

 

Was my "tar" command correct? Should I have done "sudo tar" instead?

[Nigelcliffe]

I repeat post number 2 above:  Downloading and installing the Steve Todd image onto a new SD card is by far the simplest way to JMRI on a RPi.

 

That said, there is some guidance on the JMRI website for the PI, and general stuff for other Linux variations.   My recollection of manual installs is a need to convert the files into executables (chmod).   

 

 

- Nigel

 

[KingEdwardII]

16 hours ago, melmerby said:

had to load the OS and other stuff onto it

Keith,

 

Did you start with NOOBS and install the OS from there, or was this some other approach?

Have you actually installed Raspbian Buster, or something else?

 

16 hours ago, melmerby said:

I Downloaded JMRI (Debian version)

Hmm, I download JMRI from here:

https://www.jmri.org/download/index.shtml

 

What is available there is a Linux version (not Debian) with the name:

JMRI.4.22+R4c4384d74.tgz

 

On my Pi400 I open this using xarchiver, which is a GUI tool since I mainly work with the GUI where I can.

I can unpack the .tgz file which gives a /JMRI directory and I can run JMRI from there.

 

Your command "tar -zxcf JMRI" does not look quite right to me, although I don't use that command & I'm no fan of command lines - the canonical form for extracting a .tgz to a specific directory is supposed to be like this:

"tar -xzvf archive.tar.gz -C /tmp"

 

I hope this helps.

 

Yours, Mike.

[melmerby]

3 hours ago, KingEdwardII said:

Keith,

 

Did you start with NOOBS and install the OS from there, or was this some other approach?

Have you actually installed Raspbian Buster, or something else?

 

Hmm, I download JMRI from here:

https://www.jmri.org/download/index.shtml

 

What is available there is a Linux version (not Debian) with the name:

JMRI.4.22+R4c4384d74.tgz

 

On my Pi400 I open this using xarchiver, which is a GUI tool since I mainly work with the GUI where I can.

I can unpack the .tgz file which gives a /JMRI directory and I can run JMRI from there.

 

Your command "tar -zxcf JMRI" does not look quite right to me, although I don't use that command & I'm no fan of command lines - the canonical form for extracting a .tgz to a specific directory is supposed to be like this:

"tar -xzvf archive.tar.gz -C /tmp"

 

I hope this helps.

 

Yours, Mike.

Hi Mike

The RPi OS was the latest, downloaded from RPi site and using the Windows image creator to make the SD card OS

The JMRI download was the Ubuntu version, not sure why I said Debian! (That's what Raspian/ RPi OS is based on) Same core though.

It is now installed but a bit messily.

 

*I've tried to use the GUI extract program that comes with the RPi OS and I just get a load of errors when attempting to open any g-zipped package.

 

(I have however installed LibreOffice properly after finding it resides in the packages list, so doesn't need to be downloaded and installed manually.)

 

*Like you I would prefer to use the GUI but can't as yet get it to work, probably because I'm not using it correctly.

 

EDIT

It is Buster OS

Edited March 27, 2021 by melmerby
extra info added

[KingEdwardII]

On 23/03/2021 at 19:43, melmerby said:

Is it possible to assign custom icons to the files, as happens with Windows?

I missed this question originally.

 

The answer to that is "yes".

See this page:

 

https://webserver.jmri.org/install/Raspbian.shtml

 

2/3rds of the way down the page it says:

 

"To create a complete set of Desktop icons that you can just double-click, Dan M. wrote a set of desktop startup icons for the Pi."

 

- there is an embedded link in that line to download the icons.

 

Yours, Mike.

[KingEdwardII]

6 hours ago, melmerby said:

I've tried to use the GUI extract program that comes with the RPi OS and I just get a load of errors when attempting to open any g-zipped package.

Clearly something significant wrong with your Pi OS install. You need to fix that.

 

Have you tried the following commands:

 

sudo apt update

sudo apt upgrade

 

or even

 

sudo apt full-upgrade

 

One other thing to consider once you've got the system sorted and running properly is to have a backup of the SD card in reserve. For me, I got my Pi400 working with a NOOBS SD card and once I was happy with it, I cloned the system onto a USB Flash drive using the SD Card Copier app and then removed the SD card and booted the system from the USB drive. The SD card is my backup and is safely in a drawer.

 

Yours,  Mike.

[melmerby]

Hi Mike

All up to date after two minor additions.

JMRI does appear to be working as does the extractor program (Xarchiver).

They are just a tad slower than I expected before anything happens on screen.

Using Xarchiver I clicked extract on the JMRI zipped file and there was quite a long pause then an option screen where to extract to (I used /tmp) and another pause before extracting.

After the extraction, clicking on DecoderPro file would be followed by a pause and then the menu page opened.

I tried again on my previous extract using "sudo tar -zxvf" (to a different folder) and found that also works after the pause.

 

Looks like It has been working OK but slower than I expected, especially compared to Windows 10 where clicking on DecoderPro gets an immediate response.