Pi Setup¶

This guide walks you through setting up the SpoolmanScale Pro Pi stack from scratch. If you're not comfortable with the terminal, join the Discord — the community is happy to help.

For makers

This guide is for people who want to build and set up the Pro stack themselves. A pre-built version may become available in the future.

What you need¶

Raspberry Pi (Zero 2W, 3, 4 or 5)
microSD card (16 GB+)
Raspberry Pi Imager (download here)
A computer to flash the SD card

Step 1 — Flash Pi OS¶

Open Raspberry Pi Imager and select:

OS: Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit)
Storage: your microSD card

Click the ⚙️ settings icon and configure:

Setting	Value
Hostname	`spoolmanscale`
SSH	Enable, use password authentication
Username	`pi`
WiFi	Your network (2.4 GHz only — Pi Zero 2W has no 5 GHz)
Locale	Your region

Flash and insert the SD card into the Pi.

Step 2 — Connect via SSH¶

Wait ~60 seconds after first boot, then:

ssh pi@spoolmanscale.local

If that doesn't work, use the Pi's IP address instead.

Step 3 — Optional: Passwordless sudo¶

Makes the following steps easier:

echo "pi ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL" | sudo tee /etc/sudoers.d/010_pi-nopasswd
sudo chmod 440 /etc/sudoers.d/010_pi-nopasswd

Step 4 — Save RAM (headless setup)¶

Reduces GPU memory usage by ~48 MB — useful on Pi Zero 2W:

echo "gpu_mem=16" | sudo tee -a /boot/firmware/config.txt
sudo reboot

Reconnect via SSH after reboot.

Step 5 — Install Docker¶

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sudo sh
sudo usermod -aG docker pi

Then log out and back in:

exit
ssh pi@spoolmanscale.local

Verify:

docker --version
docker compose version

Step 6 — Install SpoolmanScale Pro¶

mkdir -p ~/spoolmanscale
cd ~/spoolmanscale
git clone https://github.com/Niko11111/SpoolmanScalePro-Pi.git .
chmod +x switch-backend.sh auto-backup.sh
docker compose pull
docker compose up -d

Step 7 — Auto-start on Boot¶

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/spoolmanscale-backend.service

Paste the following:

[Unit]
Description=SpoolmanScale Backend Auto-Start
After=docker.service network-online.target
Requires=docker.service
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes
User=root
WorkingDirectory=/home/pi/spoolmanscale
ExecStart=/home/pi/spoolmanscale/switch-backend.sh auto

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Save with Ctrl+O, exit with Ctrl+X, then enable:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable spoolmanscale-backend.service

Step 8 — Open the Web UI¶

Open in your browser:

http://spoolmanscale.local

From there, activate Spoolman or FilaMan — it downloads automatically on first use.

First login for FilaMan

Default credentials: admin@example.com / admin123 — change immediately after first login.

Done!¶

Your Pi is now running SpoolmanScale Pro. See the Web UI page for what you can do from the management interface.