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Welcome to the Candle_for_raspi wiki!
This version of Candle runs very well on a Raspberry Pi 4. It can run on a raspi3 too but it's very sluggish - stick with a raspi4.
Run the raspi web browser & download the zip file from
https://github.com/pihnat/rpi-Candle/releases/download/v1.1/Candle_1.1.8_for_raspi4.zip
Open File Manager and double click the Downloads folder. Double click the zip file just downloaded. Click the Extract files button.
To be sure things run with the right permissions just unzip into the /home/pi folder.
Click the Extract button.
Now you're ready to run Candle but just before you do check if the "ask options on launch" popup box is disabled. In File Manager go to the Edit menu and select Preferences. Make sure the box Don't ask options on launch executable file is ticked.
To run Candle open the Candle folder in File Manager and double click Candle.
Note 1: to run Candle you do NOT need to install Qt5. Qt5 is only required if you want to modify the source code and re-compile it as described in the next section.
Note 2: after some discussion in closed issues #5 and #6, my 'Note 1' may not be strictly correct. I successfully run Candle on a raspi4 and Buster 'with desktop and recommended software' without Qt5, etc. But if you find that Candle won't run there's a chance it might need libqt5serialport5-dev to be installed (see issue #6). If so, open Terminal and type
sudo apt-get install libqt5serialport5-dev
If that solves the problem then open issue #6 and add a comment to confirm what you did.
If you want a shortcut on the Desktop to run Candle firstly do a right click somewhere on the desktop and select Create a New Empty File. Name it Candle.desktop
Right click the file and select Text Editor. Type the following into the file (pay attention to upper and lower case characters) and save it :
To replace the default desktop icon for the shortcut with a more suitable image I put a file called Candle.png in the Candle folder. The "Icon=" line points to that file. You can use a different image by pointing to a different image file.
If you want to make some modifications to Candle or maybe you might want to run a different version on the raspi then you'll need to build it using qt5. This requires qt5 to be installed, changes made to one or more source code files and then a new application built in release mode.
Open a Terminal window and type the following two commands to install qt5 (pay attention to case). Note - I found that an apt-get upgrade wasn't necessary just the package update but I may revise this comment if someone finds otherwise.
Run the raspi web browser & download the Candle master zip file from
https://github.com/Denvi/Candle
Open File Manager and double click the Downloads folder. Double click the zip file just downloaded and click the Extract files button. Place the extracted folder in /home/pi (as described in the "How to run Candle on a raspi" section above). In File Manager if you now look in the /home/pi folder you'll see a new folder called Candle-master which contains among other things Candle's source code.
Time to run qt5 & load the Candle project.
Open candle.pro which can be found in /home/pi/Candle-master/src
Now besides any changes you might make two files need to have a line inserted so that Candle will build under qt. Firstly open frmmain.h in the Headers folder (double click the file) and add the line
#include <QGLFormat>
Save and close the file.
In the Sources folder open glwidget.cpp and add the line
#define GL_PROGRAM_POINT_SIZE 100
Save and close the file.
Note - if you downloaded the zip file from
https://github.com/rpi-pihnat/Candle
using the green Clone or download button you won't have to edit the above two files since they already contain the changes.
Now you're ready to build the application. In the bottom left of the window change the build from Debug to Release. In the Output Pane select Issues and finally click the Build Project button. Wait till the Build is complete (the Build Progress indicator will turn green).
Close qt and open File Manager. In the /home/pi/Candle-master folder you'll see a new folder called build-candle-Desktop-Release which contains the Candle executable and everything needed to run on the raspi. I renamed the folder Candle on my raspi so it has a shorter name. You can move this folder to another raspi and run Candle there without requiring qt.
