BrickPi example programs

By W. H. Bell [ http://www.whbell.net/ ]

Software installation and configuration

BrickPi software

From Raspbian Jessie, all of the packages needed to use the BrickPi with Scratch or Python can be installed by typing:

sudo ./bin/setup-brickpi.sh

This command also configures the Raspberry Pi, enabling the serial port and setting the rate for the serial port. Once this script has been run, the Raspberry Pi needs to be rebooted to use the updated serial port configuration.

TightVNC server

A VNC server allows the desktop of a robot to be accessed remotely. Having used raspi-config to set the Raspberry Pi to boot to the console, type:

sudo ./bin/setup-vncserver.sh

This will install the TightVNC server, together with a init.d script that will start the VNC server when the Raspberry Pi is booted. When the script runs, it will prompt for a new password. This is the password that should be used to access the TightVNC server from a vncviewer. To use the vnc server, type

sudo /etc/init.d/tightvncserver start 

or reboot the Raspberry Pi

Example programs

The Scratch example programs are given in the scratch/ directory. Documentation is given in the scratch/doc/ directory. Each example can be run as described in the documentation or using the launch script. For example,

./bin/launchRpiScratchIO.sh scratch/src/simple.sb

will open the simple.sb Scratch program and start the Python code that connects to the BrickPi.