This tutorial helps you to set up your “Clockatoo” on Raspbian.

The following steps are based on Raspbian. Please update Raspbian system to the latest version before start doing everything.

Step 1

Put the battery in the battery holder on the Clockatoo, install the 4-digit LED. Please take a look at the photos provided, be careful, don’t put the LED up-side-down.

Then stack it on the Raspberry Pi. When doing this, please make sure the Reset pins on the Raspberry Pi go into the header socket on the Clockatoo.

The Reset pins are not on your Raspberry Pi by default, please solder them on the Raspberry Pi if you need^[1].

Step 2: Configure I2C

Let’s use Raspbian as example. After logged in, run your favorite editor(eg: vi, nano) to edit this file :

/etc/modules
and add these two lines to the end of the file if they’re not there:

i2c-bcm2708
i2c-dev 

Then your /etc/modules should be looking like this:

Now it’s time to see if the Clockatoo has been properly connected to the Raspberry Pi or not. Please confirm your Raspberry Pi is connecting to internet and run the following commanrd, to install the i2c-tools utility:

sudo apt-get install python-smbus
sudo apt-get install i2c-tools 

After the installation, type the follow command to see all the connected devices.
For the Raspberry Pi Revision 1:

sudo i2cdetect -y 0 

For the Raspberry Pi Revision 2:

sudo i2cdetect -y 1 

If your Clockatoo has been properly stacked on the top of the Raspberry Pi, you should be able to see this(Two numbers: 68 and 70):

Step 3: Download the Clockatoo Code from Github and Run

Please confirm your Pi is connecting to internet, and type the following commands:

sudo apt-get install git
git clone https://github.com/geekroo/Geekroo-Product-Clockatoo.git 

After downloading, if you use ls command, you should be able to see the “Geekroo-Product-Clockatoo” folder. Like this:

Go into that folder, and run the “Clockatoo” script:

cd Geekroo-Product-Clockatoo/
cd R2.0/ (If you’re using the Raspberry Pi Revision 2)

Or

cd Geekroo-Product-Clockatoo/
cd R1.0/ (If you’re using the Raspberry Pi Revision 1)

Now run the script:

sudo python clockatoo.py 

Now the Clockatoo should be working for you. The Raspberry Pi keeps updating the time automatically from the global ntp (nework time protocol) servers. Clockatoo gets time from the Raspberry Pi. So you can always see the current time.

References

1. ↑ How to do this? See – Assembling guide of echidna – Step 3