Running on a PC

Another way to try running Box Of Stops without a Raspberry Pi is to boot a PC from a USB stick or thumb drive.

There is a version of the operating system for the Raspberry Pi that has been compiled for an x86 architecture - for a normal PC. This can downloaded as an ISO image which can be used to create a bootable install on a normal USB stick.

This version of the operating system is variously referred to as Pixel, or Debian for the x86. In fact it is very nearly the normal Noobs install you would get when you buy a Raspberry Pi. It includes everything Box Of Stops needs to run.

Install instructions

Please visit here for instructions on how to download the image and transfer it to the USB stick. Please note this will need to be a dedicated USB drive - the install will erase any data already on there.

Once you boot the PC from the USB stick, you will see the normal desktop for a Raspberry Pi. This is the guide to attaching to a Wifi network from there.

And then the normal install instructions for Box Of Stops can be used.

Differences

Clearly a PC has no Gpio buttons, but otherwise this can be used as a full version of Box Of Stops.

Although the overall performance of a PC is typically better than a Raspberry Pi, we think on average the Latency experience on the Pi is still better. Clearly this varies more from PC to PC than it does from Pi to Pi, but it remains the case that we recommend the Raspberry Pi for the best Box Of Stops experience.