Pi3b ^ original Inkyphat red. Software install failure

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I resurrected a pi3b to fit a first gen Inkyphat red to it.

I started off with a fresh Trixie sdcard and proceeded with the Inkyphat software install and ran into so many error messages that I’ve no dea where to begin. I think it was at the create Docs bit where the screen filled up with lots of failed pip dependancies.

I restarted with a Bookworm sdcard and it really didn’t help matters.

I also saw lots of messages about needing to use a virtual python something or other, but the install script failed long before I needed to worry about that.

I used to like pios as it generally just worked with my limited knowledge. Now I have an Inkyphat that’s totally unusable due to a now convoluted and undecipherable install procedure. Massively disappointed.

That project idea I had has now been binned as I don’t have the skills to work out what the heck has happened.

I folllowed a github web page of instructions to the letter to get tis far but there’s no mention of this level of “brokenness” to it.

I’m not expecting much help due to the vagueness of my plight but surely I can’t be the first person to have come across this?

Parking the pi & Inkyphat back in their box.

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Unfortunately the first gen Inkyphats are old, and pretty far out of support (the repo was archived in 2019!) - there have been so many structural changes in PiOS in the intervening years that it would probably be non-trivial (at best) to get it running on Trixie.

Your best bet would probably be to dig out an old PiOS version (the last Bullseye release in Index of /raspios_oldstable_armhf/images/raspios_oldstable_armhf-2025-05-07 would not be a bad place to start, I suspect), although obviously that might impact whatever else you were wanting to run with it.

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A second vote for using Bullseye. I had to go that route with my Grow hat Mini’s.

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…this ws also my initial thought whether you have set-up the newly required virtual environment properly?! This is by far a massively underestimated issue…many (I am not saying most or all) issues can be solved by a propper set-up of the virtual environment…

Maybe worth to consider…