Installation

Install

apt-get

Make sure you are using the lastest version of Raspbian:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade

Install pifacecommon (for Python 3 and 2) with the following command:

$ sudo apt-get install python{,3}-pifacecommon

You will also need to set up automatic loading of the SPI kernel module which can be done with the lastest version of raspi-config. Run:

$ sudo raspi-config

Then navigate to Advanced Options, SPI and select yes.

You may need to reboot.

Manually

This is a more detailed description of the installation. You will have to reboot after setting up SPI and GPIO permissions.

Building and installing

Download and install with:

$ git clone https://github.com/piface/pifacecommon.git
$ cd pifacecommon/
$ sudo python3 setup.py install

Note

Subtitute python3 for python if you want to install for Python 2.

Enable the SPI module

PiFace boards communicate with the Raspberry Pi through the SPI interface. The SPI interface driver is included in the latest Raspbian distributions but is not enabled by default. You can load the SPI driver manually by running:

$ sudo modprobe spi-bcm2708

And you can permanently enable it by commenting out the blacklist spi-bcm2708 line in /etc/modprobe.d/raspi-blacklist.conf.

The /dev/spidev* devices should now appear but they require special privileges for the user pi to access them. You can set these up by adding the following udev rule to /etc/udev/rules.d/50-spi.rules:

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

Then create the spi group and add the user pi:

$ groupadd spi
$ gpasswd -a pi spi

Note

To enable other users to access SPI devices (PiFace, for example) you can add them to the spi group with gpasswd -a otheruser spi.

Enable GPIO access

Interrupts work by monitoring the GPIO pins. You’ll need to give the user pi access to these by adding the following udev rule (all on one line) to /etc/udev/rules.d/51-gpio.rules:

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'"

Then create the gpio group and add the user pi:

$ groupadd gpio
$ gpasswd -a pi gpio

Uninstall

$ sudo apt-get remove python{,3}-pifacecommon