Beginners • Library needs root access - messes up Thonny

Working on getting a Freenove Raspberry Pi Smart Car with Rpi Model 3A+ Trixie to be controlled from an xbox controller - 'fun' xmas project to amuse grandkids. VNCing into the RPi from mac
Have it all working - using evdev to handle the xbox controller - requires a venv. Manually had to install all the libraries needed by the Freenove car as its setup.py doesn't work in a venv. Motors and servo control good. lgpio was awkward - thanks https://github.com/Gadgetoid/PY_LGPIO?t ... me-ov-file
Led control needs the adafruit neopixel library which demands to run as root. Can't run from Thonny anymore as it isn't root.
Can run from the venv in the terminal using sudo -E env PATH=$PATH python3 xboxonce.py. (xboxonce.py is my program saved by Thonny)
This works fine and maybe this is the only answer.

Question is there a better way so I can run stuff from Thonny?
I have tried running Thonny as root but it just wasn't useable - it ran so slowly - minutes to file open - not even sure it ever got there.
I have a Rpi4 modelB lying around - would it help?
All ideas welcomed, thanks

Statistics: Posted by steev_jo — Sat Dec 20, 2025 12:09 pm — Replies 1 — Views 40

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