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1Step 1
In step one you are going to download the operating system "Raspbian Jessie" and install it onto the Raspberry Pi. The download link is here,https://howtoraspberrypi.com/download/raspbian_latest.zip . You will need to unzip the download and copy it onto a micro SD card. You will insert this micro SD card into the slot on the Raspberry Pi and it will stay there indefinitely.
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2Step 2
In step two you are going to install the touchscreen. The touchscreen we are using for this project is the Wave Share Spot Pear, which is only compatible with the operating system Raspbian Jessie. Installing the touchscreen requires several steps which are detailed here http://waveshare.com/wiki/3.5inch_RPi_LCD_(A)http://waveshare.com/wiki/3.5inch_RPi_LCD_(A) This step was the hardest part of this project for me, so hang in there. Once you're over this step it all gets easier!
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3Step 3
In step three you are going to download source code for the project "Talker" and copy it onto your Raspberry Pi. The repository for this project is here https://github.com/amendment19/talker go to this URL and click on the green button labeled "Clone or Download" and choose "Download ZIP". Once the zip file is on your desktop, you will need to unzip it and transfer it to the Raspberry Pi (I used a USB drive for this which is why USB drive is listed in the parts list.)
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4Step 4
In step four you are going to install Django on your Raspberry Pi. Downloads are available here https://www.djangoproject.com/download/, however I found that without an internet connection the installation hung up when trying to locate the pytz dependency. I tried to overcome that by copying the pytz files into a local folder, but it still wouldn't work for me.
I highly endorse the DjangoGirls tutorial https://tutorial.djangogirls.org/en/django_installation/ it was very easy to follow, and even addressed the Linux specific installation issue I faced with Raspbian Jessie.
The DjangoGirls instructions use pip install, so it still requires an internet connection. Because of this requirement I've added a wifi dongle to the parts list.
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5Step 5
In step five, you are going to run a server locally. The "Talker" app is written in Django which has server side scripting in the python programming language. This means it has to run on a server in order to display correctly. You can look at the HTML file locally without running a server... but you will just see python code where the functionality would be. Open the command line interface on the Pi and change directories into the "talker" folder that you downloaded from GitHub. Activate your virtual environment with the command
source myvenv/bin/activate
Next type the command below to run the server locally. When you do this, the command line interface will prompt you to migrate the database. Type the command it tells you in order to migrate the database, then start the server with the command
python3 manage.py runserver
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6Step 6
In step six you are going to launch the "Talker" app in Raspberry Pi's chromium browser. Open a new window for browsing the Internet and type
http://127.0.0.1:8000
in the URL address bar. The "Talker" app should now be running locally on the raspberry pi.
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