UPDATING PROGRAMS MANUALLY

Eventually you'll find you're not being supported adequately by one of the hundreds of developers whose work is combined into what people think of as Linux. Streamtuner2 stopped working for me recently and it turns out the version in the repo is ancient. Even worse, the program itself hadn't been updated for over a year so there's really no excuse for the repo maintainers. It's just plain laziness. Luckily we don't have to wait for them to wake up.

First thing to do is install gdebi because it'll resolve dependencies problems automagically for us.

sudo apt install gdebi

Then find the Sourceforge page for Streamtuner2 and get the latest dot-deb package, currently:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/streamtuner2/files/streamtuner2-2.1.9.deb/download

Ordinarily you'd also need an ARMHF version of the DEB package but fortunately for us this is a Python program. So all we have to do now is right click the package and select gdebi from the list. Updating Streamtuner2 to the latest and greatest version is just one install button click away. It's as easy as playing Wintendo.

Password for the default keyring is "pi", same as the default user.

Since submitting the article the official power supply came out at MCM/Element14. It works with the Pi 2 and Pi 3 and comes with travel adapters, all for under $10, so there's really no reason to buy anything else. Only one out of ten USB cables I tested could actually handle 2 AMPs so it's nice to have a wire rated for 2.5A supplying the juice (no more flickering red light) even if you don't need all that power. Tzumi also now has a 2.4 AMP USB battery. If 2.1A is "turbo charging" then I guess this one is "super charging".. or something like that... George Orwell was an optimist.

I submitted the article last winter but better late than never. Page 23 of the Summer 2016 edition has lots of useful info I forgot to put in this blog. Buy a copy at Barnes and Noble today. It's not available online yet!