Running FPP on an Old Laptop

corfoto4

Apprentice elf
Joined
Dec 23, 2020
Messages
61
Location
Perth, WA
Hi all,

Due to the shortages of Raspberry Pis, I wonder if it is possible to set up and run FPP slaves on my old laptop.
I have done my research but it seems as though the FPP image is expressly set up for Raspberri Pis and BeagleBones. Does anyone know if I can install this instance on a machine running Linux/Ubuntu?

Alternatively, does anyone know if FPP would work on a RockPi or have another solution to these shortages?

Thank You!
 

CargoLights

Apprentice elf
Generous elf
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Sep 16, 2020
Messages
80
Location
Grantsville, Utah, United States
I haven't tried it, but it seems that you should be able to run an emulator with the FPP OS instead of the Raspbian OS. You could start here:
https://www.qemu.org/
You won't be able to run it directly on a laptop as Raspberry Pi runs on an ARM processor, but if you are set on doing this, I'm sure you could make that emulator work.
 

merryoncherry

Senior elf
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Apr 2, 2022
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Cherry St., Hudson MA USA
I would use xSchedule on an old laptop, and am not sure why you wouldn't make it master (as it has a lot of other neat tricks it can do). That said, have you considered a beagle? They run FPP and, while list price is a bit more than the Pi, it is a lot easier to actually get one. (Err, it is somewhat easy to get a Pi too, if you're willing to pay 3x list price / 2x BBB price.)
 

KiwiPhil

Full time elf
Joined
Dec 17, 2017
Messages
165
Location
Boondall, Brisbane
Hi all,

Due to the shortages of Raspberry Pis, I wonder if it is possible to set up and run FPP slaves on my old laptop.
I have done my research but it seems as though the FPP image is expressly set up for Raspberri Pis and BeagleBones. Does anyone know if I can install this instance on a machine running Linux/Ubuntu?

Alternatively, does anyone know if FPP would work on a RockPi or have another solution to these shortages?

Thank You!
also I am pretty sure the shortage ( in Australia anyway) seems to be over for Pi's most retails and wholsalers are listing them as in stock
 

corfoto4

Apprentice elf
Joined
Dec 23, 2020
Messages
61
Location
Perth, WA
you don't need to emulate a pi. you can install an x86 version of linux and then install fpp manually on that. You will want debian or something based on it.

wget -O ./FPP_Install.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/FalconChristmas/fpp/master/SD/FPP_Install.sh
chmod 700 ./FPP_Install.sh
su
./FPP_Install.sh
I did find that script. However, I am executing it on Ubuntu but the script requires other data packages to be installed first. I have spent over a day working out what packages and libraries I need and I still don't have it working yet. Have you got this working yourself?
 

darylc

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Joined
Dec 8, 2012
Messages
1,146
That script will be very hard to make work on Ubuntu, it is designed to take a Debian install and turn it into an FPP appliance.

I would personally never run FPP on a laptop, if I really wanted to use the laptop I'd use xschedule.
 

cozbert

Full time elf
Joined
Sep 3, 2012
Messages
142
Location
Whyalla SA
I have FPP running on an old desktop for my shows and have done for a couple of years, i just installed raspbian x86 and then run the script above.
 

Skymaster

Crazy elf
Global moderator
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Dec 19, 2021
Messages
1,042
Location
Western Sydney
Keep in mind too, that if you do use FPP on Debian, make sure you match the Debian version to the FPP version.
FPP 6.0 is built for Debian 11 (Bullseye) and FPP 5.x is built for Debian 10 (Buster).
Whilst it may work with different releases, these are the specific ones that the FPP rPi and BBB images use, and alot of work that's gone into 6.0 is to make it compatible with Debian 11.
 
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