Today’s Ubuntu 23.10 updates included kernel updates. Once the update completed and the Raspberry Pi 5 was rebooted, the SPI devices were fully operational. I ran a test example from luma.led_matrix ( https://github.com/rm-hull/luma.led_matrix ):
$ ./matrix_demo.py -n 4 --block-orientation -90Created deviceMAX7219 LED Matrix DemoFast scrolling: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.Slow scrolling: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dogVertical scrollingBrightnessAlternative font!Proportional font - characters are squeezed together!Tiny is, I believe, the smallest possible font (in pixel size). It stands at a lofty four pixels tall (five if you count descenders), yet it still contains all the printable ASCII characters.CP437 Characters
Believe me, everything worked with the HiLetgo four-character 8×8 matrix display (see below for details). I’m so happy to finally see this fix land.
Raspberry Pi 5 GPIO Header wiring diagram to MAX7219 display controllerHiLetgo MAX7210 Dot Matrix Module
I’m including the Raspberry Pi 5 wiring diagram and a picture of the HiLetgo MAX7210 Dot Matrix Module I used for the test. With the latest update to Ubuntu 23.10, everything works as expected.
Unless you have a very specific use case that absolutely requires you use Raspberry Pi OS on the Raspberry Pi 5, then install and use Ubuntu 23.10 exclusively for the Raspberry Pi 5.
It’s been a long strange trip to this post, across many years and many little personal projects. Let’s start here to de-tangle some of it.
Back in the late 2010s (2018 or so) I started purchasing Adafruit boards which included Circuit Playground as well as several Feather boards. They all came preloaded with CircuitPython, Adafruit’s fork of MicroPython. The boards were easy to program with embedded Python and the tools, while simple, were solid. What I appreciated most (and still do) is how the boards, when plugged into a host computer via USB, appear as a drive on the host system. You can then edit CircuitPython code directly on the device, and if it’s running when you save a new version, the device will note the file system change and restart with the version of your code you just saved. You can use any editor on the host system you desire and are already familiar with. The only other tool needed on the host system for development is a serial application that can work with the Adafruit device’s USB serial port. With that application you have a full Python REPL to work with, and when the application is running, you can see any printed outputs or see when and where you have a CircuitPython coding error.
The last time I worked with those boards was back in 2019, before I retired and before the Pandemic and Lockdown took hold. They went into my gadget storage and stayed there until earlier this week. I was looking for another device that had Bluetooth capabilities, so of course when I unearthed the Bluefruit in my stash I pulled it out and plugged it in. It started up just fine, except the Bluetooth code section I’d written did nothing. I opened the boot_out.txt file on the device’s flash device and read it was still running with CircuitPython 7.2. The current CircuitPython release is 8.2.9, a rather wide difference between versions. So I decided I’d stop and upgrade the device’s CircuitPython.
Circuit Playground Bluefruit Circuit Python page
When you arrive at the CircuitPython download page ( https://circuitpython.org/board/circuitplayground_bluefruit/ ) for the Bluefruit you’re presented with a very clear warning about the device’s bootloader. Since I knew without looking that my copy of Bluefruit would need a bootloader update, I scrolled down to the part at the very bottom that spoke of how to update the bootloader.
CircuitPython Bootloader Update Instructoins
At this section things begin to get a little murky. There’s a cautionary note to start off about how to find out what bootloader version you have and not to update unless you have to (I knew I had to) and then two links off the page, one to generic instructions and a big button to browse the bootloader repo. I’ll cut to the chase.
Long story short, after several failed attempts following directions before the command line instructions, I managed to update the bootloader and then update my Bluefruit to CircuitPython 8.2.9. I did all of this under Linux Mint, and it went swimmingly. When it powered back up the Bluetooth section failed to run with a coding error, so I disabled the one call to that module with a single comment and let the rest of it execute. I’ve now got two boards I need to investigate Bluetooth functionality. But, hey, it’s just a hobby, right?
Radarwitch
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