Full list with notes is in the Components section. The minimum to get a working panel: Pi 5, the 3.5" ILI9486 screen, a 27W USB-C supply, an active cooler, and a decent microSD. The ALFA, CAN dongle, and SDR are all optional — their tiles simply don't appear until they're plugged in.

Do not skimp on the power supply. An underpowered Pi 5 with dongles attached produces intermittent faults you will spend a day blaming on software.

Write the Kali Raspberry Pi image to the microSD, enable SSH, and boot the Pi with a network cable and no screen attached. Everything from here is done over SSH — the panel isn't alive yet.

Update before you touch anything else:

sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade -y

This is the step that eats afternoons, so it's deliberately minimal. Two lines in /boot/firmware/config.txt:

dtparam=spi=on
dtoverlay=piscreen,drm,rotate=90

Reboot. That's the entire display configuration.

rotate is the only display setting that requires a reboot — pick 90 or 270 depending on which way up your case holds the panel. Touch orientation is handled in software, so you never come back to this file to fix taps landing in the wrong place.

Verify the framebuffer exists:

ls -l /dev/fb0
cat /sys/class/graphics/fb0/name

You should see the ILI9486 DRM framebuffer. If /dev/fb0 is missing, stop here — nothing downstream will work.

sudo apt install -y evtest
sudo evtest

Pick the ADS7846 device from the list and drag a finger across the panel. You want a stream of ABS_X / ABS_Y events. Note the device path — that's the evdev node the app reads directly. No X server, no touchscreen driver stack, no calibration utility.

Noisy or jumpy readings at this stage are normal for resistive touch. That's why the interface is taps only.

sudo apt install -y python3-pil python3-numpy python3-evdev \
  network-manager arp-scan i2c-tools can-utils

Note what isn't here: no pygame, no SDL, no X. The app renders with PIL and numpy straight into the framebuffer.

[CONFIRM this list against a clean install — some of these ship with Kali and I built this incrementally rather than from scratch.]

git clone https://github.com/scottmclesly/Scottina.git
sudo cp -r Scottina /opt/kilodash

Run it in the foreground first to confirm it paints:

sudo python3 /opt/kilodash/run.py

You should get the splash, then the tile grid. Quit with ESC or q from an attached USB keyboard.

It runs as root because it needs /dev/fb0, the evdev node, nmcli, and arp-scan's raw sockets.

sudo cp /opt/kilodash/kilodash.service /etc/systemd/system/
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now kilodash

Reboot. The Pi should come up into the tile grid with no login, no desktop, no keyboard. That's the whole point of the build — if you're still seeing a console, the service didn't take.

Almost every panel needs axis flipping. Open Settings → Touch on the device and toggle invert-X, invert-Y, or swap-axes until taps land where you press. There's a Calibrate helper there too.

These are runtime settings written to config.json — no reboot, no code edits, and you can also edit them over SSH if the panel is unusable enough that you can't reach Settings.

With the core running, hotplug does the rest. Plug in the RTL-SDR, the ALFA, or the CAN dongle and its tile appears on the home grid within a second. Unplug it and the tile disappears.

Nothing to configure. If a tile doesn't show up, the device didn't enumerate — check lsusb before you check anything else.

Each of these is an idempotent installer under setup/ — safe to re-run, and none of them are needed for a working panel. Add them when you want the capability.

sudo setup/install-phase4.sh          # Node-RED, AIS-catcher, Signal K
sudo setup/install-gps.sh             # gpsd + chrony + snapshot daemon
sudo setup/install-tables.sh          # CAN/NMEA2000 decode-table service
sudo setup/install-logic-analyzer.sh  # sigrok + fx2lafw

The web-app backends take the longest — AIS-catcher builds from source. Start it and go make coffee.

A note on scope

This is a diagnostics tool and the install reflects that. There's no offensive tooling to enable, no hidden mode, no authorized-use toggle to flip. The LAN scanner builds every command as an argument array from a fixed set of intents with a hardcoded reject list — there is no raw-flag input anywhere in the UI.

The single exception is CAN, which does normal TX and RX. Heartbeats and replies are how you diagnose a bus.