Pre-Release Opening
We are working on releasing a new version for the GrovePi’s firmware (v1.3.0) that its target is to fix well-known bugs.
We already have something on our plate, but before making it official, we invite anyone who has had problems with it to give it a test and let us know if problems still persist.
Fixed Bugs on Version 1.3.0
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Fixed synchronization bugs which led to very small IO rates
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Small refactorization of the code to something slightly better
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Fixed the dust sensor #408
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Mitigated abnormality caused by the Raspberry Pi not supporting clock stretching on the I2C #411
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Debugged and sped up the rate of acquisition of the DHT sensor #418
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Add IR receiver functionality for any remote control and fix inherent issues with the library #416
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Add option to set the flow meter and the dust sensor on different ports other than D2 #421
Apart from these fixes, we also have come up with a proper documentation to the GrovePi which temporary resides on my account: robertlucian.github.io/GrovePi/
Use the documentation for your projects and if you see anything suspect, please let us know.
Getting Started
You will need to ignore the How To Install Section in the documentation because this isn’t an official version yet and thus the install command is only for the old version (the current one).
Instead, use this command to update/install the GrovePi:
curl -kL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/RobertLucian/GrovePi/fix/firmware-bugs/Script/update_grovepi.sh | bash
This will only install libraries/packages on the Raspberry Pi, but you still need to flash the firmware. For that, read this section:
https://robertlucian.github.io/GrovePi/fw/#flashing-the-firmware
To check if you’ve got the right version on the GrovePi, run this in a Python interpreter:
import grovepi
print(grovepi.version())
If you read 1.3.0 then it means you have successfully flashed the firmware onto your GrovePi.
Reported Issues
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Dust Sensor problem reported by @grahamhorne, @hallberg.brad, @dctoday, @d_cyphert.
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Dust Sensor improvement requested by @edrjeffery.
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Sensor values getting overwritten by other values and vice-versa reported by @jbeckj, @jianghong_023, @skybird, @jer, @berm
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Getting max values (1023 or NaN or invalid) when using various commands partially mitigated and reported by @manie.conradie, @royhills, @cluckers. The error is caused by the badly implemented HW I2C of the Raspberry Pi. Can be avoided by using a software I2C, which we intent on using in the near future. Sometimes, this gets encountered on the DHT sensor, but it’s something normal with it in particular.
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I2C protocol issues that can’t be reproduced, but we think they might have been mitigated completely as reported by @ferraris.simone, @kjaron, @laszewski.
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New feature request to enable the flow meter and the encoder to be assigned on different ports - we now can attach them to 2 ports D2 and D3 as opposed to just D2. More than this number is not possible with the current hardware.
To see more of this project, check our project page on GitHub.
Where to Report Other Issues Should They Appear
If other bugs emerge with this new firmware, please create a new topic on this forum, assign the grovepi, firmware & fw1.3.0 tags, put the topic in the GrovePi category and start with the title “Unreleased FW v1.3.0 - <<state your problem here>>”.
After you create the topic, link the topic to this announcement by adding a comment with the link to the respective topic.