Pi 5 Support

[alessaba]

Hi,
I just got a Pi 5 and the first HAT i mounted was a Blinkt i had laying around.
I did a fresh Pi OS install, and ran the installation script

I first got this error
error: externally-managed-environment
and the installation stopped, but i installed the apt package and the module seems to show up in python 3

The problem is that when i call the show() function, there is what seems to be a permissions error to /dev/mem.
Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/pi/Pimoroni/blinkt/examples/rainbow.py", line 22, in <module> show() File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/blinkt.py", line 76, in show GPIO.setup(DAT, GPIO.OUT) RuntimeError: No access to /dev/mem. Try running as root!

Running as root does nothing. There is no error but nothing lights up

i read that it could be something related to /dev/gpiomem and i saw that at least on the Pi 5 (because of the RP1, perhaps?) , there is no gpiomem but just gpiomem0 through gpiomem4, so maybe this could also be the reason
Update: tried on my Pi Zero 2 and in fact there is just gpiomem on there. Pi5 has 5 different "files"

Am i doing something wrong or is there some compatibility problem?

[Gadgetoid]

is there some compatibility problem?

Several, in fact, I wont bore you with the details - unless you're in for an otherworldly information dump - but I'm working through our libs and trying to get a functional GPIO environment up and running on the Pi.

Actually Blinkt might be an interesting case. I've dug mine out and will have a look.

[alessaba]

I am more than curious about the details, if you have the time :)

Otherwise i will have patience and wait while i try other things

[Gadgetoid]

Okay to save me the typing here's the virtual environment side of things - pimoroni/boilerplate-python#13

And the GPIO side of things - https://lore.kernel.org/linux-gpio/20231025082707.821368-1-phil@gadgetoid.com/

Blinkt has also, as an aside to both of these, suffered from some significant bitrot.

Looks like my Blinkt is now working, though I need to fix clear on exit!

[Gadgetoid]

Okay this PR has a new working build in - #102

You will, however, need a pre-release version of libgpiod for Python. I'll post my build here momentarily.

[Gadgetoid]

Hopefully one of these will work.

First you'll need to create a venv:

python3 -m venv ~/my_virtual_env
source ~/my_virtual_env/bin/activate

Then -

Either sudo apt install python3-dev and pip install gpiod-2.0.1.tar.gz
gpiod-2.0.1.tar.gz

Or unzip this one, and pip install gpiod-2.0.1-cp311-cp311-linux_aarch64.whl
gpiod-2.0.1-cp311-cp311-linux_aarch64.zip

And finally:

git clone https://github.com/pimoroni/blinkt -b repackage
cd blinkt
pip install .

[alessaba]

The PR works on my end too, thank you for the very quick fix!

[alessaba]

The clear function seems to only work 80% of the time, but every other thing i tested works

[Gadgetoid]

Thanks. I'll investigate. I'm a little in uncharted territory here, it's also possible the LEDs are just being uncooperative. The protocol is weird but software can fix that, too.

[Gadgetoid]

Well, that's odd! I can't seem to get clear to fail. What code were you running?

[alessaba]

One of the examples it happened with was rainbow.py

maybe it's something weird with my system, but it’s not that big of a problem