Raspberry Pi 2- What works and what doesn't!

#Jessie

If you’ve just got started with a Pi 2, chances are you’ll want to run Raspbian Jessie. It’s the new hotness and makes a some things easier and simpler to install. Check it out here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/

##If you’re updating an old Raspbian

A new stable Raspbian kernel is available, at last. This comes complete with the release of RPi.GPIO which will get most of your Pimoroni goodies back up and running pronto- except the Unicorn HAT, we’re still working on that, sorry!

Thank you Ben, wherever you are!

To get updates, fire up your Pi 2, connect it to a network ( via ethernet or Wifi ) and type this into the terminal:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

You should see something like this:

The following packages will be upgraded:
  libraspberrypi-bin libraspberrypi-dev libraspberrypi-doc libraspberrypi0 python-rpi.gpio python3-rpi.gpio raspberrypi-bootloader sonic-pi

Hit Y, and Enter to continue, wait for it to finish, and reboot your Pi to a working add-on! Yay.


#DFRobot USB 2.8" Display

Changes to accomodate AstroPi/SenseHAT have made it much, much easier to get the DFRobot USB 2.8" display up and running. I’ve now created a GitHub repository for just this which, once downloaded, will install easily on Pi 1 or Pi 2 - just run the installer and reboot!

More info here: https://github.com/pimoroni/rp_usbdisplay

#Unicorn HAT
Working

To get the latest Unicorn HAT library you should:

sudo pip install unicornhat --upgrade

This work on Pi 2 and Pi 1.

###Known issues:

  • munmap errors and memory leak reports when exiting scripts
  • runs much faster than the old library, so the timings of your blinky effects may be waaay off

#Working

  • UnicornHAT sudo pip install unicornhat --upgrade
  • PiGlow
  • Skywriter HAT
  • Display-o-Tron 3000
  • Pibrella

PiGlow. Working. Only needs I2C and absolutely should work!???

Preparations made…

i2c libraries (SMBus) and python support are installed.
i2c driver modules are enabled and not blacklisted.

But error found…

pi@raspberrypi ~/piglow-master/examples sudo python piglow-example.py Traceback (most recent call last): File "piglow-example.py", line 52, in <module> piglow = PiGlow(1) File "piglow-example.py", line 21, in __init__ self.bus = SMBus(i2c_bus) IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory pi@raspberrypi ~/piglow-master/examples

Why? Thanks for any ideas… Hope RPI GPIO gets fixed soon too…

What do you get if you:

ls /dev/i2c*

Looks like either I2C isn’t properly enabled, possibly not in /boot/config.txt.

or

You’re using a PiGlow example which expects /dev/i2c-0 rather than /dev/i2c-1.

I got the Display O Tron working with my Raspberry Pi 2 by manually installing the RPi GPIO package from sourceforge.

Do the following to get it up and running:
(we won’t need to do this once v0.5.10 of RPi GPIO is released)

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential python-dev python-pip mercurial
cd ~
hg clone http://hg.code.sf.net/p/raspberry-gpio-python/code raspberry-gpio-python-code
cd raspberry-gpio-python-code
sudo python setup.py install

Not managed to get the Unicornt hat working though :(

This works, but I wouldn’t recommend it since it’s still pre-release software that also depends on pre-release and bleeding-edge updates to Raspbian, so it’s a bit of a dive into the unknown!

You seem to know what you’re doing though, so carry on!

Where is your new script? I am having no luck getting pillow to work on the new Rspi 2.
Please reply! Thank you

Where is your new script? I am having no luck getting pillow to work on the new Rspi 2.
Please reply! Thank you

What errors are you encountering?

It might be that you need my quick-fix for Raspbian’s timing issue ( this saves potentially blowing everything up with rpi-update ): https://gist.github.com/Gadgetoid/57084ec5817142a118ac

And you may also need to make sure you re-enable I2C via raspi-config.

Also, go into a Terminal and:

ls /dev/i2c*

To make sure the devices are even showing up.

Sorry I’m a beginner. I got this pi@raspberrypi ~ ls /dev/i2c* /dev/i2c-1 pi@raspberrypi ~

Sorry I’m a beginner. I got this

pi@raspberrypi ~ ls /dev/i2c* /dev/i2c-1 pi@raspberrypi ~

That’s a good start! Which PiGlow example are you trying to run ( where did you get it from? ) and what sort of errors are you encountering?

It might be something as simple as you not running it as root (the magical sudo prefix) since that’s a common omission, try:

sudo ./the-example-youre-trying-to-run.py

This one sudo python test.py

from https://github.com/Boeeerb/PiGlow

Also, when i try to run it i get this message

File “/home/pi/piglow/clock.py”, line 7, in
from piglow import PiGlow
File “/home/pi/piglow/piglow.py”, line 16, in
import RPi.GPIO as rpi
RuntimeError: This module can only be run on a Raspberry Pi!

Okay! I see the problem. This PiGlow library includes RPi.GPIO to detect the Pi version, and this doesn’t have a stable release for the Pi 2 yet.

I’ve just created a fork for you here: https://github.com/Gadgetoid/PiGlow

Go into Terminal/LXTerminal and:

git clone https://github.com/Gadgetoid/PiGlow
cd PiGlow
sudo python setup.py install

Then try an example!

Thank you for your time! I have done that, what shall i do now?

Try re-running the example code, what happens now?

THANK YOU SO MUCH! I was beginning to looses all hope! I love you (Not literally) lol! Thank you so much! i was going to upload a photo but it won’t let me

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You’re welcome! You should also be able to add photos now.

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Very Bright! Thanks again!

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