PiPulse Agent Setup

June 7, 2026 · View on GitHub

Overview

The PiPulse Agent is a systemd service that will run in the background of your Raspberry Pi while being extremely lightweight, not requiring a lot of system resources and demand. I will go though how to setup the Python virtual environment, edit the .service file for your system, and monitor its status after it has been setup.

Setup

Make sure your Pi has Python 3 installed. (or higher)

Open a terminal window in the pipulse-agent folder.

Edit Port (Optional)

  1. Open pi-agent.py
  2. Modify the PORT variable to a oprt of your choosing. (anything below port 1000 is not recommended)

Setup Virtual Environment

  1. Create a virtual environment: python -m venv .venv
  2. Activate it: source .venv/bin/activate
  3. Install Python dependencies: pip install -r requirements.txt

Modify .service file, open local port, and add to daemon

  1. Open pipulse-agent.service on a text editor of your choice.
  2. Replace everything in curly braces with the necessary values.
  3. Save it and move it to /etc/systemd/system/ (sudo may be needed)
  4. If you have ufw installed, make sure to open the port locally: sudo ufw allow [port]. Otherwise, skip this step.

Refresh Daemon and Start Service

  1. Reload the daemon: sudo systemctl daemon-reload
  2. Start the service: sudo systemctl start pipulse-agent.service
  3. Verify it's running: sudo systemctl status pipulse-agent.service

Monitoring

Once the service is running, you won't even be able to tell! However, that doesn't mean it's just going to run forever with no way to stop it. You can modify it's behavior and monitor it's status to make sure its running correctly.

ActionCommandInformation
Set service to startup on rebootsudo systemctl enable pipulse-agent.serviceYou can also turn it off by replacingenable with disable
Restart servicesudo systemctl restart pipulse-agent.serviceThis command can be used to quickly reload the service if a change has been made to the Python script.
View service logssudo journalctl -u pipulse-agent.serviceAdding-f to the end will give you real-time logs; great for debugging.