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Raspberry Pi Installing CircuitPython Libraries on Raspberry Pi User Guide

  • CircuitPython libraries and adafruit-blinka will work on any Raspberry Pi board except the compute module! That means the original 1, the Pi 2, Pi 3, Pi 4 or Pi Zero.
  1. Download the latest Raspbian or Raspbian Lite to your computer
  2. Burn the Raspbian image to your MicroSD card using your computer
  3. Re-plug the SD card into your computer (don't use your Pi yet!) and set up your wifi connection by editing supplicant.conf
  4. Activate SSH support
  5. Plug the SD card into the Pi
  6. If you have an HDMI monitor we recommend connecting it so you can see that the Pi is booting OK
  7. Plug in power to the Pi - you will see the green LED flicker a little. The Pi will reboot while it sets up so wait a good 10 minutes
  8. If you are running Windows on your computer, install Bonjour support so you can use .local names, you'll need to reboot Windows after installation
  9. You can then ssh into raspberrypi.local

The Pi Foundation has tons of guides as well

  • We really really recommend the lastest Raspbian only. If you have an older Raspbian install, run "sudo apt-get update" and "sudo apt-get upgrade" to get the latest OS!

Update Your Pi and Python

Run the standard updates:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

and

sudo pip3 install --upgrade setuptools

If above doesn't work try

sudo apt-get install python3-pip


  • Python2 support has been dropped, so you will need to either use pip3 and python3 as commands or set Python 3 as the default python install.


Set your Python install to Python 3 Default

There's a few ways to do this, we recommend something like this

  • sudo apt-get install -y python3 git python3-pip
  • sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python python $(which python2) 1
  • sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python python $(which python3) 2
  • sudo update-alternatives --config python

Enable I2C and SPI

A vast number of our CircuitPython drivers use I2C and SPI for interfacing so you'll want to get those enabled.

You only have to do this once per Raspberry Pi but by default both interfaces are disabled!

Once you're done with both and have rebooted, verify you have the I2C and SPI devices with the command

ls /dev/i2c* /dev/spi*

You should see the response

/dev/i2c-1 /dev/spidev0.0 /dev/spidev0.1




Enabling Second SPI

If you are using the main SPI port for a display or something and need another hardware SPI port, you can enable it by adding the line

dtoverlay=spi1-3cs

to the bottom of /boot/config.txt and rebooting. You'll then see the addition of some /dev/spidev1.x devices:


Make sure you're using Python 3!

The default python on your computer may not be python 3. Python 2 is officially discontinued and all our libraries are Python 3 only.

We'll be using python3 and pip3 in our commands, use those versions of python and pip to make sure you're using 3 and not 2

Install Python libraries

Now you're ready to install all the python support

Run the following command to install the Raspberry PI GPIO library:

pip3 install RPI.GPIO




Run the following command to install adafruit_blinka

pip3 install adafruit-blinka




The computer will install a few different libraries such as adafruit-pureio (our ioctl-only i2c library), spidev (for SPI interfacing), Adafruit-GPIO (for detecting your board) and of course adafruit-blinka

That's pretty much it! You're now ready to test.

Blinka Test

Create a new file called blinkatest.py with nano or your favorite text editor and put the following in:

 Download: file
  1. import board
  2. import digitalio
  3. import busio
  4.  
  5. print("Hello blinka!")
  6.  
  7. # Try to great a Digital input
  8. pin = digitalio.DigitalInOut(board.D4)
  9. print("Digital IO ok!")
  10.  
  11. # Try to create an I2C device
  12. i2c = busio.I2C(board.SCL, board.SDA)
  13. print("I2C ok!")
  14.  
  15. # Try to create an SPI device
  16. spi = busio.SPI(board.SCLK, board.MOSI, board.MISO)
  17. print("SPI ok!")
  18.  
  19. print("done!")

Save it and run at the command line with

python3 blinkatest.py

You should see the following, indicating digital i/o, I2C and SPI all worked



TAG: 4inch Round LCD HDMI Capacitive Touchscreen Display 720x720 For Raspberry Pi/Jetson Nano/mini PC ESP32 Thermal imaging Raspberry Pi5 PCIe TO M.2 MINI Support Gen2 and Gen3 SSD Compatible 2230 2242 Pi5 Fan ESP32 S3 Development Board 1.43 inch AMOLED Display 1.43inch TouchScreen For Arduino LVGL With SD-Port/ QMI8658C 6-Axis Sensor Raspberry Pi Autofocus Camera Jetson Orin NX Raspberry Pi5 Raspberry Pi RP2040 Long-Rang Raspberry Pi 5 PCIe to M.2 NVMe SSD Adapter Board HAT Pi5-PCIe-MPS2242-2230-Board Electronic EYE 0.71 inch Round LCD Display Screen For Arduino Raspberry Pi ESP32 Pico STM32 Raspberry Pi 3.5 inch LCD F Display Capacitance TouchScreen 60fps ST7796 GT911 320x480 Also For Arduino/Pico2/ESP32/RP2040/RP2350 Raspberry Pi 8inch LCD 768x1024 Capacitive TouchScreen HDMI Display X1301 Raspberry Pi 5 HDMI to CSI-2 Shield 1080P@60fps & Audio & Video Also For 4B/3B Raspberry Pi 5 Serial UART Bus Servo ST3025 TTL 40KG.CM Magnetic Encoder 360° High Precision And Large Torque Raspberry Pi 5 Sound Card Raspberry Pi Pico Display Camera JETSON NANO MINI Fan