PiFace Problems

Keith, you are not alone. The 'documentation' with the piface is worse than useless. I particularly like the typo on page 2 of the 'instructions' (etc/ which should be /etc/) and that if the emulator fails (I can't get it to work – ends with 'segmentation fault') the 'instructions' that follow are, again, useless. I will get it working in the end, but no thanks to the fools at man.ac.uk. How difficult would it have been to provide basic instructions in the box? Good luck with it - I'll reply back when I've finished arm-wrestling with it and got it doing something (I have a job in mind).

... not sure if urls are allowed here - if they are, here's some documentation for piface ...

https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B-UAZ9CyJCLGQjJ3RDlqa2pqaDg/edit?pli=1

3.1.1 still nothing happend

groups:

pi adm dialout cdrom sudo audio video plugdev games users netdev input spi gpio

lsmod:

Module                  Size  Used by

snd_bcm2835            16432  0

snd_pcm                77728  1 snd_bcm2835

snd_seq                53482  0

snd_timer              20110  2 snd_pcm,snd_seq

snd_seq_device          6462  1 snd_seq

snd                    58744  5 snd_bcm2835,snd_timer,snd_pcm,snd_seq,snd_seq_device

snd_page_alloc          5169  1 snd_pcm

joydev                  9356  0

spidev                  5248  4

evdev                   9450  6

leds_gpio               2243  0

led_class               3570  1 leds_gpio

spi_bcm2708             4841  0

hid_cherry              1575  0

cat /etc/modprobe.d/raspi-blacklist.conf

#blacklist spi-bcm2708

blacklist i2c-bcm2708

cat /lib/udev/rules.d/60-python3-pifacecommon.rules

KERNEL=="spidev*", GROUP="spi", MODE="0660"

SUBSYSTEM=="gpio*", PROGRAM="/bin/sh -c 'chown -R root:gpio /sys/class/gpio && chmod -R 770 /sys/class/gpio; chown -R root:gpio /sys/devices/virtual/gpio && chmod -R 770 /sys/devices/virtual/gpio'"p

Everything appears to be set up correctly. Does the following Python code print anything when you press switch 0 after the last line?

import pifacedigitalio

pifacedigitalio.init()

pifacedigital = pifacedigitalio.PiFaceDigital()

listener = pifacedigitalio.InputEventListener()

listener.register(0, pifacedigitalio.IODIR_ON, print)

listener.activate()

As a last resort, have you tried reinstalling Raspbian and then installing pifacedigitalio on a fresh install?

Okay. I run ure sample code, no output. Reinstalling Rasbian was my first try of troubleshooting.

Did you press switch 0? Perhaps your switch is broken? Try connecting the ground pin and pin 0 with a wire (a paperclip will do). What happens then?

Hey, i think you mean sw1 / input0, but i also try all the other switches and as i said in a earlier post "But simple polling on a button works fine. So buttons and leds are working...".  So the hardware should be fine?!. Strange that I seem to be the only one with this behavior

Hello Thomas,

I have my SD card inserted and tested in a different RPi with another PiFace. The error is thus definitely somewhere in the software configuration!

I'm going to make the Raspian completely new and write down step by step what I did. Perhaps you notice what's wrong or missing.

Thanks for your help so far!!

Sounds like a good idea. Hopefully we can get to the bottom of this!

Okay that's exactly what I did, no more and no less!

• Downloading 2013-09-10-wheezy-raspbian from raspberrypi.org
• Writing Image on SD Card with win32 disk imager (v0.9)
• First boot
• Enable boot to desktop
• Reboot
• Connect via WinSCP
• Copy common 3.1.1 and digitalio 2.1.0
• Install common (sudo dpkg –i python3-pifacecommon…)
• Reboot
• Install digitalio (sudo dpkg –i python3-pifacedigital…)
• Reboot
• Lunch IDLE3
• Select  / usr/share/doc/python3-pifacedigitalio/examples/presslights.py
• Run F5
• Press the Buttons

Nothing happens. Still the same sh** :-( I'm desperate ...

It might be somethig to do with IDLE (I've never used it). Try running the program from the command line (xterm or lxterminal).

$ python3 /usr/share/doc/python3-pifacedigitalio/examples/presslights.py

yeah! That's it. Hours that I have employed you and then such an error.. big thanks!

yeah! That's it. Hours that I have employed you and then such an error.. big thanks!