CSCI 255 — Raspberry Pi

Getting ready

You’ll need the following hardware for this lab.

• Raspberry Pi
• breadboard
• Pi Cobbler breakout
• BMP180 pressure sensor breakout
• Two LED’s
• Two 330 Ω resistors
• One push button switch
• Power supply (looks like a cell phone charger)

Physical connection

Monitor and keyboard connections

It is possible to connect to the Pi using the monitor, keyboard and mouse. However, that involves moving the USB cable from the workstation to the Pi. The CSCI 182 structure would be unhappy if you failed to reconnect them properly.

IP connection

Your Pi should have a letter written on its Ethernet port. The domain name of your Pi should be uncacsci-pi-λ.cs.unca.edu where λ is the letter on the Pi.

Use ssh to connect to your Pi using the password revealed by the instructor.

ssh pi@uncacsci-pi-λ.cs.unca.edu

If this doesn’t work, we really may have to connect the monitor.

Pi activities

Pause for a minute while everyone gets connected and we will take a look at an orientation presentation made by Rebecca Bruce and me at CCSC:SE 2014. We will pause around slide 22 for some activities.

Keep in mind that the Raspberry Pi is a Linux computer running a real multi-user operating system. This is very different that an Arduino. During this lab we will occasionally use the Unix sudo command which allows the non-privileged user pi to execute commands as the privileged user root. We will avoid running commands as root! Yes, this can be bothersome, but it is good practice for working in the real world and allows you to call yourself a Linux system administrator-in-training.

Wiring up the Cobbler

Now let’s wire up the Pi Cobbler.

• Place the Cobbler on the breadboard a little bit left of the middle.
• We use only one side of the Pi Cobbler, that side that has pins labeled 3V3. Wire the two 3V3 pins to the red bus on the breadboard with red wires and the two GND pins to the black (or blue) bus with black wires.
• If your breadboard has two pairs of buses on each side, make sure those two buss-es are connected.
• Connect an LED and resistor in series to test the power connection.
• Connect an LED and resistor in series from ground to Pin 17 of the cobbler.
• Connect the push-button switch between ground and Pin 22 of the cobbler.

It should all look at bit like the right side of the picture below.

I will try to make some better pictures in lab.

Trying out the command line

On the Arduino, you wrote a program to read switches and turn on LEDs. We could write a program on the Raspberry Pi, but we are going to type shell commands that use the kernel’s GPIO Sysfs interface.

# list the gpio directory
ls -l /sys/class/gpio
# "export" pin 22, running as root
sudo sh -c "echo 22 > /sys/class/gpio/export"
# there should be a new subdirectory of /sys/class/gpio
ls -l /sys/class/gpio
# list files for controlling pin 22
ls -l /sys/class/gpio/gpio22
ls -lL /sys/class/gpio/gpio22
# determine the groups associated with this account
id
# allow users in group pi write access for files controlling pin 22
sudo chgrp pi /sys/class/gpio/gpio22/direction
sudo chgrp pi /sys/class/gpio/gpio22/value
sudo chmod g+w /sys/class/gpio/gpio22/direction
sudo chmod g+w /sys/class/gpio/gpio22/value
# check it out
ls -lL /sys/class/gpio/gpio22
# set Pin 22 for input
echo in > /sys/class/gpio/gpio22/direction
# read Pin 22
cat /sys/class/gpio/gpio22/value
# Wait five seconds and then read pin after you pressed the switch
sleep 5; cat /sys/class/gpio/gpio22/value
# Loop it and push it: hit Ctrl-C to stop
while true ; do cat /sys/class/gpio/gpio22/value ; sleep 1 ; done
# "export" pin 17, running as root
sudo sh -c "echo 17 > /sys/class/gpio/export"
ls -lL /sys/class/gpio/gpio17/
# allow users in group pi write access for files controlling pin 17
sudo chgrp pi /sys/class/gpio/gpio17/direction
sudo chgrp pi /sys/class/gpio/gpio17/value
sudo chmod g+w /sys/class/gpio/gpio17/direction
sudo chmod g+w /sys/class/gpio/gpio17/value
# check it out
ls -lL /sys/class/gpio/gpio17
# set Pin 17 for output
echo out > /sys/class/gpio/gpio17/direction 
# turn LED on and off
echo 1 > /sys/class/gpio/gpio17/value
echo 0 > /sys/class/gpio/gpio17/value
# this is a one liner, though it could be spread over several lines
while true ; do cat /sys/class/gpio/gpio22/value > /sys/class/gpio/gpio17/value ; sleep 1 ; done
# do something else that is exciting

GPIO with a shell script

It is possible to place these commands in a shell script similar to blink.sh.

Consult the 916-page Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide for more information.

I²C

Look at pages 26 to 37 for a short introduction to I²C. We’ll do more in class soon.

Writing up an I²C sensor

Adafruit sells a large number of I²C breakout boards; however, if you ask, we will let you borrow some of ours, especially for senior projects.

• PCA9685 PWM/Servo Driver
• ADXL345 Accelerometer
• TPA2016 Class D Audio Amplifer
• LSM303DLHC accelerometer and magnetometer and L3GC20 gyroscope
• TSL2561 Light Sensor
• BMP180 Pressure/Temperature Sensor

These will also work on Arduinos when used with a bi-directional logic level controller.

Enabling I²C support on the Pi

There are few things we need to do to enable I²C support on the Pi’s operating system.

First, see if it is enabled by typing the following command:

ls -l /dev/i2c*

If you get a message about there being “No such file or directory”, your Pi is not yet configured for I²C. In that case, you need to follow the instructions in Adafruit’s Configuring I2C lesson, with the following exceptions.

• Use apt-get to install the package libi2c-dev in addition to python-smbus and i2c-tools.
• You do have to modify /etc/modules in the distribution we are running on the Pis.
• Do not reboot before modifying /etc/modules.
• You do not need to change /etc/modprobe.d/raspi-blacklist.conf or /boot/config.txt in our distribution.
• Add pi to group i2c using the command
  sudo adduser pi i2c
• Have someone check out your /etc/modules before you reboot.

After reboot, you should be able to type the following commands successfully. There is no point in continuing if they fail.

sudo ls -l /dev/i2c*
sudo i2cdetect -y 1

Wiring the I²C bus

You can remove the switch and LED, or you can just work around it. In any case, write up the I²C bus. It’s not hard. Only four wires are needed for each I²C module: Two connect 3V3 and GND to the appropriate power bus; and the other two, SDA and SCL, form the daisy chain of the I²C bus. There is a picture on slide 30 of the orientation presentation.

     0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  a  b  c  d  e  f
00:          -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
10: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
20: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
30: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
40: 40 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
50: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
60: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
70: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 77 

Difficult temperature reading

Open the BMP180 datasheet in another browser window. Let’s take a look at the slides on pages 39 to 42 of the orientation presentation. Note how the commands on page 42 relate to the program found on page 15 of the BMP180 datasheet.

# Make sure you have a BMP180
i2cget  -y 1 0x77 0xD0 b
# Examine mysterious EEPROM calibration registers
i2cdump -r 0xAA-0xBF -y 1 0x77
# Examine measurement register
i2cdump -y -r 0xF4-0xF7 1 0x77
# Tell device to read temperature
i2cset  -y 1 0x77 0xF4 0x2E
# Read the temperatur
i2cdump -y -r 0xF4-0xF7 1 0x77

I²C based programming

Yes, there is a better way! You can write programs.

Execute the following commands to copy a tar file to your Pi then un-tar it.

wget http://www.cs.unca.edu/brock/classes/Fall2015/csci255/labs/raspberrypi/i2cjson.tar
tar xfv i2cjson.tar
cd i2cjson

Compare the C program for reading temperature from the BMP180 and the Python program for reading temperature with the sample code in the BMP180 datasheet.

C-based temperature reading

At the command line, run the program make to recompile the program. make is a Unix command for the “smart” building of programs. It is used heavily in both NetBeans and MPLAB X.

This Makefile is pretty simple. The ones generated by NetBeans and MPLAB X are pretty complex. See if you can figure out what Makefile does. In the past, students in CSCI 202 created many files like these.

all:		bmp180json

bmp180json:	bmp180json.c
	gcc -o bmp180json -DI2CBUSNUM=1 bmp180json.c

Python-based sensor reading

Now take a look at the bmp180json.py program. You can also run it. Python seems to be the most popular choice for programming on the Pi. The output of this program is an HTTP header followed by an object specified in JSON. This is very useful for web based applications.

pinkie-pie.cs.unca.edu is a Raspberry Pi with 256Mbytes of RAM that runs a web site and a CGI Python script to return the temperature in RRO 221.

A better way

bmp180json.py was written before the Adafruit library for the BMP180 on the Raspberry Pi was available. adabmp180json.py is a much simpler program that uses the Adafruit library.