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PIFace won't init

Former Member

My son bought a PiFace and unfortunately installed it on the Raspberry Pi with it already powered up.

We seemed to have gotten the software loaded ok, but the emulator doesn't find the PiFace and

in Python the init() command doesn't find the device. Any other troubleshooting ideas before he

needs to buy another?

Thanks, my son and I are still Raspberry Pi and Linux newbies.

 

Jim

  • Hello Jim,

     

    Not too sure what to suggest. I've got a Pi-face and from what I recall, the docs do make reference to making sure there is no power when the piface is plugged in, so i'm presuming something nasty has happened to yours.(I'm not saying you should have read the docs, just that it probably means it isn't that well protected if someone does plug it in when the Pi is live).

     

    Make sure you have followed the instructions to the letter, including removing the black listing of the SPI device driver, if this isn't done, the Piface won't be found:

    To always enable the SPI driver:

    • After logging in, edit /etc/modprobe.d/raspi-blacklist.conf

      sudo nano etc/modprobe.d/raspi-blacklist.conf 

    • Insert a # at the start of the line containing blacklist spi-bcm2708

    #blacklist spi-bcm2708

     

    Let us know how things go?

    Steve

     

  • in reply to GreenYamo

    Thanks Steve for the reminder and that did the trick. My son was anxious to start using the board and plugged it in before I got home from work.

    I reimaged the SD card with the latest Debian and when we were trying to put in the # to comment out the line we kept getting the UK pound symbol instead. So after getting the right keyboard setup we forgot to go back and comment this out.

    Works great now, so it is some what tolerant to 12 year olds being in a hurry.

     

    Jim

  • in reply to Former Member

    Jim,

    Good news both on the 'Piface is better protected than I thought' dept and also the 'Jim and his son still have a working Piface' dept :-)

     

    I know at some point I will end up doing the same thing, so good to know it might not fritz it !

     

    Steve