Setting Up PiFace Digital
Assuming your Raspberry Pi is now setup with SSH enabled, has its own Static IP Address ... and is able to access the Internet, we are now ready to install the PiFace Digital board, and start running a few Linux commands to get the PiFace software installed.
- Ensuring that the power to the Raspberry Pi is OFF, carefully locate the PiFace socket with the Raspberry Pi GPIO pins and gently push into place,
- Now power up the Raspberry Pi and PiFace and wait for the boot sequence to complete.
During this project you will be frequently performing Linux commands in the Terminal. If you want to do this in the comfort of your rocking chair via a laptop or other computer - now is as good a time as any to start getting used to using SSH to connect to your Raspberry Pi. If you are a Mac OSX user you can perform this task by using the Mac Terminal - if you are Windows user download and install Putty.
Providing you did not change the default username (pi) and password (raspberry) during the setup process, SSH into your Rasberry Pi by typing
ssh pi@192.168.xxx.xxx
(192.168.xxx.xxx being the static IP address you assigned to your Raspberry Pi during the setup process)
you will then be asked for your Password - type raspberry
you will then be taken to your Raspberry Pi's command prompt.
Piface Digital communicates with the Raspberry Pi using the SPI interface. The SPI interface driver is included in the NOOBS / Raspbian distribution that you previously setup when installing the Raspberry Pi - but is not enabled by default. To enable the driver we are going to use Nano (a command line text editor)
1 - In Linux Terminal, at the command prompt type :
$ sudo nano etc/modprobe.d/raspi-blacklist.conf
Hit return and scroll down to the line that reads
blacklist spi-bcm2708
insert a hash (#) at the start of the line
#blacklist spi-bcm2708
You now need to save the changes - Press Ctrl-X .... then Press Y .... Then Hit Return
Next on lthe list you need to install the PiFace Digital libraries and change the permissions of the SPI interface. The following install.txt script automates this process with the following commands.
2 - In Linux Terminal, at the command prompt type : $ sudo apt-get update
Hit return and wait for the update process to complete
When you are returned to the command prompt
type : $ wget http://pi.cs.man.ac.uk/download/install.txt | bash
Hit return and once the software has downloaded and completed installing and you returned to the
command prompt
type : $ sudo reboot
..... hit return and that is it.
In the next section we will start to explore the PiFace Digital board.