Using pi-topPulse as a HAT

pi-top Accessories pi-topPULSE
#1

HI. A few years ago I had a Pi-top laptop and bought a Pulse to go with it. I no longer have the laptop, but still have the Pulse.

At the time I also used the Pulse as a HAT on a Pi 3, and there was no issue installing the software and making it work.

However, it’s a different story in 2024, and despite many hours of searching, and tinkering with software sources, etc, I can’t find any specific software (lots of dead links) and I can’t get the Pulse to be recognised. This is with a 3A+ and a 4B. I also briefly tried Pi-top OS (rather than Raspberry Pi OS), but didn’t get far with that either.

I’d be really grateful if someone could point me in the right direction! It cost me £50 at the time, and I always hoped to make proper use of it some day.

Thanks

#2

Hi @vgnmnky,

The Pulse software was integrated into the main pi-top SDK repo, including usage examples. You can use this with pi-topOS or install it on Raspberry Pi OS in it’s entirety or as subpackages (pulse is in the general one pip3 install pitop.pitop)

The old pt-pulse package is no longer published but I have made the repo public again as it includes the old Readme and a few other useful bits missing from the new SDK.

#3

Hi,

Ive tried this and it keeps saying :- pip3 install pitop.pitop
Looking in indexes: https://pypi.org/simple, https://www.piwheels.org/simple
ERROR: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement pitop.pitop (from versions: none)
ERROR: No matching distribution found for pitop.pitop

Please can someone advisor on how I can install this, so i can use my pi-top Pulse

#4

Did you ever figure out how to use the pulse as a hat?

#5

I revisited this recently. Unfortunately still with zero success. Following various links (from Angus’ post), but no joy. Same error as Hosken79 above. Not able to build either, or add the repo (at least partly due to now being on Trixie).
Also just tried Pi-top OS, and can’t find how to access anything there either, just a pi-topd error.
Has anyone else had any luck AT ALL?