New PiTFT package beta release – now with Pi 2 support! Please try it out :)
Hey everyone, as you know, the Pi Foundation recently released a new Raspberry Pi 2 and with it also did a fairly major upgrade to the Pi processor and kernel setup. In order to properly support the Pi going forward, we need to have the latest firmware and kernel. Also, the Pi has moved to device tree overlays, a new way of handling external hardware!
For the last 3 weeks Adafruit has been working on getting PiTFT support solid on the Pi 2 and also improving performance and installation on the Pi 1 model A/B/A+/B+ and we’re finally ready for a pre-final-release beta. Thanks to some incredibly hard work by Notro, Popcornmix, Brennen Bearnes and Todd Treece we have a fancy new installation package for all models of PiTFT (2.2″, 2.8″ resistive, 2.8″ capacitive, and 3.5″ resistive)
Please note we’ve done quite a bit of testing but this is still a beta, so don’t run this on your ultra-valuable Pi installation with all your important and irreplaceable manuscripts! The new installation program is housed at https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-PiTFT-Helper
To run it on a fresh raspbian Pi, first make sure you have networking up and running, then at the command line run:
to install the new adafruit kernel and helper script. Then you can run the configuration-helper script with
sudo adafruit-pitft-helper -t [typeofscreen]
where [typeofscreen] is 22 (2.2″ HAT), 28r (2.8″ resistive), 28c (2.8″ capacitive) or 35r (3.5″ resistive)
Please try it out and comment below if it does or doesn’t work for you. We may need to help you in the forums but this will give us information so we can do a final release. Thank you for your patience! I know a lot about printk() now.
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I tried to build this on a Raspberry Pi B with (initially) an older Raspbian (maybe December 2014, I am not sure). After dist-upgrade and rpi-update the TFT (not surprisingly) no longer lit up.
The kernel loaded fine, but unfortunately, the “sudo apt-get install adafruit-pitft-helper” does not work: It aborts with an unresolved dependency to “raspberrypi-bootloader”.
I guess I’ll re-flash the SD card with the latest Raspbian and then try again.
Update: After a manual “sudo apt-get install raspberrypi-bootloader” I could load the helper application. The PiTFT is now working fine.
Apparently the instructions have to be extended a little if the PiTFT is already working using the previous set of drivers.
OK, so I did the install on a brand new install of the latest Raspbian, did an update/upgrade, and an rpi-update.
The scripts and instructions seem to work. Upon reboot, I see the console text on the 3.5″ display, but the desktop doesn’t show up on the small display, only on the HDMI output.
I tried removing the HDMI cable and rebooting, but still the only thing I see on the mini display is the console text and an underline in the upper left of the now black display.
I tried this twice and both times it would not boot. I got tons of errors while its in the boot screen after installing the pitft-helper stuff onto the pi. Help with this would be great.
Martin: Sorry about that one. I’d guess that raspberrypi-bootloader was held back or broken for one reason or another. I’ll try to update the instructions a bit to cover that case. We should probably recommend that people start with a fresh Raspbian, although I think the packages will work in most cases on older installs.
For Brett’s issue with X showing up on HDMI, see here:
Hi , may be some one should post this info in the Pi 2 Compatibility Updates forum.
So people subscribed there can get a notification .
Forum link : http://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=68250&start=15
I tried to build this on a Raspberry Pi B with (initially) an older Raspbian (maybe December 2014, I am not sure). After dist-upgrade and rpi-update the TFT (not surprisingly) no longer lit up.
The kernel loaded fine, but unfortunately, the “sudo apt-get install adafruit-pitft-helper” does not work: It aborts with an unresolved dependency to “raspberrypi-bootloader”.
I guess I’ll re-flash the SD card with the latest Raspbian and then try again.
Update: After a manual “sudo apt-get install raspberrypi-bootloader” I could load the helper application. The PiTFT is now working fine.
Apparently the instructions have to be extended a little if the PiTFT is already working using the previous set of drivers.
OK, so I did the install on a brand new install of the latest Raspbian, did an update/upgrade, and an rpi-update.
The scripts and instructions seem to work. Upon reboot, I see the console text on the 3.5″ display, but the desktop doesn’t show up on the small display, only on the HDMI output.
I tried removing the HDMI cable and rebooting, but still the only thing I see on the mini display is the console text and an underline in the upper left of the now black display.
I tried this twice and both times it would not boot. I got tons of errors while its in the boot screen after installing the pitft-helper stuff onto the pi. Help with this would be great.
Seems to work great for my pi 2.
Thanks!
This is working great on my PI 2 as well. Great work!
Martin: Sorry about that one. I’d guess that raspberrypi-bootloader was held back or broken for one reason or another. I’ll try to update the instructions a bit to cover that case. We should probably recommend that people start with a fresh Raspbian, although I think the packages will work in most cases on older installs.
For Brett’s issue with X showing up on HDMI, see here:
http://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=68250&start=15&sid=f5312ff79f3c64fe488aa187445370f1#p354923
– probably it just needs an “export FRAMEBUFFER=/dev/fb1”.
Mike – details about the errors you’re seeing would be helpful. Feel free to post in the forum thread or file an issue on the GitHub project:
https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-PiTFT-Helper
As a first suggestion, I’d try with a fresh Rasbpian install, if you haven’t done that yet.