Software for PiFace

Documentation is here: http://piface.github.io/pifacedigitalio/

Dear Tom,

I have updated Raspbian and installed pifacedigitalio following your

advice. Unfortunately blink.py failed with the report "no such file or

directory".

It seems that all along I've been having that report so I still need help

I'm afraid.

My home/pi directory at present contains the folders:

indiecity,

Squeak

RPi.GPIO

RPi.GPIO .0.5.3a

piface

Desktop

Documents

scratch

Python Games

python3_pifacecommon_4,0,0-1_all(1).deb

ocr_pi.png

data.tar.gz

install_scratch_GPIO.sh

install.txt

debian-binary

contro.tar.gz

pure13.0.2.55 8en_gb.exe

Can you try the following commands and show me the output, please?

    $ aptitude show python3-pifacedigitalio

    $ ls -l /usr/share/doc/ | grep piface

You should be able to obtain the examples and documentation from the Github source https://github.com/piface/pifacedigitalio

Dear Tom,

Here is the listing for you:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ aptitude show python3-pifacedigitalio

Package: python3-pifacedigitalio

State: installed

Automatically installed: no

Version: 2.1.0-1

Priority: optional

Section: python

Maintainer: Thomas Preston <thomas.preston@openlx.org.uk>

Architecture: all

Uncompressed Size: 528 k

Depends: python3 (>= 3.2.3-3~), python3-pifacecommon (>= 3.0.0),

         python3-pifacecommon (< 4.0.0)

Description: The PiFace Digital I/O module.

Python 3 module for interacting with PiFace Digital. Documentation:

http://piface.github.io/pifacedigitalio/

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ is -l /usr/share/doc/ | grep piface

bash: is: command not found

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ ls -l/usr/share/doc/ | grep piface

ls: invalid option -- '/'

Try `ls --help' for more information.

pi@raspberrypi ~ $

I was confused by the typeface using your second line. Sorry.

Chris.

Dear Tom,

I've done all the updating and upgrading of Raspian as per examples on

https://github.com/piface/pifacedigitalio. The outcome of the Blink test

was :

pi@raspberrypi ~ $  python3

/usr/share/doc/python3-pifacedigitalio/examples/blink.py

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pifacecommon/spi.py", line 40, in

open_fd

    self.fd = posix.open(spi_device, posix.O_RDWR)

OSError: No such file or directory: '/dev/spidev0.0'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "/usr/share/doc/python3-pifacedigitalio/examples/blink.py", line 9,

in

    pifacedigital = pifacedigitalio.PiFaceDigital()

  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pifacedigitalio/core.py", line 45,

in __init__

    super(PiFaceDigital, self).__init__(hardware_addr, bus, chip_select)

  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pifacecommon/mcp23s17.py", line 91,

in __init__

    super(MCP23S17, self).__init__(bus, chip_select)

  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pifacecommon/spi.py", line 32, in

__init__

    self.open_fd(spi_device)

  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pifacecommon/spi.py", line 44, in

open_fd

    % (spi_device, SPI_HELP_LINK)

pifacecommon.spi.SPIInitError: I can't see /dev/spidev0.0. Have you enabled

the SPI module? (

http://piface.github.io/pifacecommon/installation.html#enable-the-spi-module

)

pi@raspberrypi ~ $

I hope this is useful to you. I saw no activity on the PiFace board. Is it

my error perhaps? Can you offer any other ideas please?

Chris Hart

Thanks for suggestion. I have followed this through to the letter and ended up with a puzzling result with the blink.py routine failing once again with a directory problem:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $  python3 /usr/share/doc/python3-pifacedigitalio/examples/blink.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pifacecommon/spi.py", line 40, in open_fd
self.fd = posix.open(spi_device, posix.O_RDWR)
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/dev/spidev0.0'

Chris.

One thing immediately jumps out at me

pifacecommon.spi.SPIInitError: I can't see /dev/spidev0.0. Have you enabled

the SPI module?

Have you? I would suggest following the link and see where that takes you.

The error seems to be that the driver for the SPI is not loaded, therefore the OS doesn't know about /dev/spidev0.0

On Unix (and by extension Linux) systems most of the IO is handled as if the device were a file, so when a device driver is loaded the OS will create a "file" in the /dev/ directory corresponding to the device. In this case the SPI device.

If that file is not found, it probably means that the driver for the file isn't loaded, or you don't have permission to access it.

I haven't had the opportunity to play with the PiFace yet, but I would suspect that your error has something to do with the module not being enabled.

I briefly visited this page

Installation — PiFace Common 4.0.0 documentation 

which is the same as the link above and it seems to have the information you need.

Good Luck,

Mike

Dear Tom,

I have got the PiFace to respond by having gone into Config Advanced and

setting SPI to "Yes" following advice at:

http://piface.github.io/pifacecommon/installation.html#enable-the-spi-module

I'm looking forward to learning how to set up and run some interesting

projects.

Kind regards,

Chris. Hart.

pifacedigital-emulator works straight off the prompt for me