Joining Emoncms and Adafruit PiTFT 3.5"

Dear Open Energy monitor partners:

I am trying to develop a touch screen Raspberry Pi with open energy monitor inside.

I am having may problems because of the compatibility between these software.

I have tried to install Adafruit software over emoncms SD ready to go and also install emoncms over Adafruit SD ready to go. The result is the same: Black screen.

I don't know the incompatibilities between these software, at the beginning they seem to be compatible, but i can solve it properly. Any idea? someone had to solve it before?

Adafruit software: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-pitft-3-dot-5-touch-screen-for-raspberry-pi/easy-install

Emoncms software: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-pitft-3-dot-5-touch-screen-for-raspberry-pi/easy-install

I want to use both software in the same raspberry pi.

Thanks in advance.

bernamorillo's picture

Re: Joining Emoncms and Adafruit PiTFT 3.5"

Dear Open energy monitors:

I am making huge advances in my project, actually it is nearly done.

I have discover very interesting method and tricks to achieve an open energy monitor running into a PiTFT 3.5

1. SD image.

I took as a Starting SD image the Adafruit 3.5 PITFT Ready to go SD with the kernel and packages to run these screens:

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-pitft-3-dot-5-touch-screen-for-raspb...

I prefer this image because i am using Raspberry 2 and 2014 debian is a bit outdated (emoncms ready to go was made in August 2014)

2. Resizing partitions.

The most important thing is resize the 2 partitions because Linux partition (partition 2) is nearly completed with Adafruit and Raspbian data, so you must increase the size using the following method:

http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/499/how-can-i-resize-my-r...

I have a 8 Gb SD and I am using 5 Gb for the partition 2 and 3 Gb (system data) for partition 3 (open energy monitor data). THIS STEP IS SO IMPORTANT BECAUSE IF YOU DON'T DO IT YOU MUST RESIZE LATER IN ORDER TO INSTALL MYSQL WITHOUT ANY PROBLEM.

3. Following Open energy monitor installation in this web page:

https://github.com/emoncms/emoncms/blob/low-write/docs/install.md

however you must be careful in this step:

sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt

replace the line:

dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=ttyAMA0,115200 kgdboc=ttyAMA0,115200 console=tty1 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline rootwait

you have to reboot the raspberry because after this step you must reconfigure the screen again, it turns black BUT DON'T PANIC you must only do this:

# login

pi

raspberry

#configure pitft

sudo adafruit-pitft-helper -t 35r

yes

sudo reboot

After reboot, the screen will appear again normally.

I recommend you do this steps with a HDMI screen connected because in other way you must do it "blind". I usually do it "blind" but I have repeated around 10 times :-) now

This step is fully explained here:

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-pitft-3-dot-5-touch-screen-for-raspb...

4. Danger, some Emoncms steps with tiny mistakes:

There are 2 "sudo" mistakes installing debian packages

mkdir /home/pi/data/mysql   must be changed by:

sudo mkdir /home/pi/data/mysql

$ git clone -b low-write https://github.com/emoncms/emoncms.git     must be changed by:

$ sudo git clone -b low-write https://github.com/emoncms/emoncms.git 

 

For now that's all, I am configuring emoncms and making more advances in order to have a "perfect" SD image with Pitft 3.5 and Emoncms.

See you!

[Two further copies of this post have been deleted. Please observe the notice on the right "NEW USERS, PLEASE READ - Posts held for moderation" - Moderator (RW)]

JD's picture

Re: Joining Emoncms and Adafruit PiTFT 3.5"

This is very interesting!  Which version of EmonCMS are you installing?

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