Problems installing the sparkfun a111 on raspberry pi 5 (cm5)

Sensors Distance
1

hi, I am new here and a new to programming with raspberry and this kind of sensors. So please just give me a friendly hint if I can already find answers anyhwere else :slight_smile:

I am trying to get the sparkfun a111 breakout board running on my raspberry pi 5 cm5. So far I already tried to get help with perplexity/chatgpt but come to the point where it says there are differences between the pi4 and pi5 that makes it unable to install.

has anyone ever get this sensor running on a pi5? is there anything I need to change in the system to get it to work?

thanks in advance.

2

The A111 getting started guide says this, which is a strong hint:

To use the A111 you’ll need either an ARMv7 or an ARM Cortex-M4 – the closed-source SDK currently only supports these architectures.

We were able to get the sensor working on the Raspberry Pi 3, 3B+, and 4.

The simplest approach is to use one of those Pi models (very inexpensive!). Otherwise, as a beginner, you could be facing quite an interesting challenge.

3

Thank for your Answer. unfortunately i have a project, where i probably need the performance of the pi5. Plus I already have the sensor and the pi. But get errors that the gpio pins are in use or not accessable. I read something that the kernel was changed from pi 4 to 5 and that it is somehow possible to change some files so that it works.
From the first part of your quotation the Pi5 should work fine.
At first it would be interesting if it is possible in general. Second is what do i need to do to make it work?

4

I doubt that as the RPi 5 has the ARM Cortex A76 processor, which runs the ARMv8 instruction set.

i probably need the performance of the pi5

Why do you think that?

You could start with a Pi 4, get the project working, and then determine if a factor of two or so increase in performance is absolutely necessary, and worth the effort required to make it work on a Pi 5.

Second is what do i need to do to make it work?

That is a major part of the learning process. Have fun!

5

hey, the start is already over, the rest of the project is finished and it gets already to the performance limits with the pi 5 and the corresponding accessories. I only need to check different sensor types to choose one that works best. thanks for your opinion, I’d rather not want to change the hole set up for every sensor I check.
The documentation also says that you need an ARM7 at a minimum. So my question still remains. What do I need to do to get it running on a Pi 5? Has anybody done it yet and how?

6

Start by solving the problems you have already encountered, but forgot to describe.

The comment in the Sparkfun getting started guide suggests that one stumbling block would be whether the proprietary SDK (presumably a binary distribution) runs on the Pi5.

Good luck and please post the solution for others with this issue.

7

For everyone else who is interested in this topic. The sensor works very well with the pi 5. But so far only with the 32-bit OS. And only the SDK. I couldn’t get the exploration tool running. So I used the C Code from the examples to read the sensor and then send it to my python code.

On a Pi 3B+ I also get it to run on a 64-bit OS installing the 32-bit Libraries:

sudo dpkg --add-architecture armhf
sudo apt update
sudo apt install libc6:armhf libstdc++6:armhf
sudo apt install gcc-arm-linux-gnueabihf g++-arm-linux-gnueabihf
sudo apt install libgpiod2:armhf

after this i could compile all the example files with

make all

this compilation also runs without errors on the pi 5 but the execution failed with the following error

Segmentation fault