This is our first distro,  Occidentalis v0.1. Rubus occidentalis is the black raspberry.  It is derived from Raspbian Wheezy July 15

We have made a few key changes to make it more hardware-hacker friendly!

• Updated to Hexxeh firmware
• 4 Gig SD image (will not fit in 2 G cards!)
• I2C and hardware SPI support
• I2C/SPI modules initialized on boot
• sshd on boot
• ssh keygen on first boot
• runs avahi daemon (Bonjour client) and is called raspberrypi.local
• Realtek RTL8188CUS wifi support
• One wire support on GPIO #4 when loaded

Please keep in mind, we are not full time linux distro maintainers - we will try to fix any bugs we find but this distro is not for beginners or people who are new to linux!

How to Install!

Click below to download the ZIP file:

• Adafruit Raspberry Pi Educational Distro - Occidentalis v0.1 !700 Megs! (August 2, 2012)
  MD5 of the img itself (not the zip):  34b5d3d511fcce0b82186816119d9881
  MD5 of the zip: cc3559cb6e7cb5f33b0e46118e16b748
  SHA1 of the img: e95dbb306bee8a9f77b486c729c7869923b7ee43
  SHA1 of the zip: 72eb71d316b8765d5594878b8662f2118dc4320a

and decompress it. Note that it is 4 GB large! You will need a 4GB card or larger. We suggest using our 4GB SD card which works great

You will also need a SD or MicroSD card writer to burn the image on. We suggest using our speedy MicroSD card writer that works with any OS.

Then follow the directions here, except use the downloaded and uncompressed Occidentalis image instead of Wheezy

I2C Support

I2C support is on SDA and SCL pins. To test, connect any I2C device to power, ground, SDA and SCL. Then run  i2cdetect -y 0 (as root) to detect which addresses are on the bus

For more ideas, check out this post (by the most awesome cboot) and others on the Raspberry Pi forums

Our BMP085, MCP4725, Servo Driver, and 7-segment breakout tutorials cover using I2C via Python on the Pi - so please check those out and read the code examples for I2C interfacing ideas!

SPI Support

SPI support is on the CLK/MOSI/MISO/CS0/CS1 pins. To test, connect your logic analyser/scope to the pins and run echo "testtext" > /dev/spidev0.0 to send some dummy data to the SPI port. You can simply read/write the /dev/spidev files to read/write from SPI

Our Light Painting tutorial uses the hardware SPI system to write to digital LED strip,  we also have a 'bitbanging' software SPI tutorial here if you need such a thing

One Wire Support

One wire is most commonly used for DS18B20 temp sensors. The Pi does not have 'hardware' 1-wire support but it can bitbang it with some success. Connect a DS18B20 with VCC to 3V, ground to ground and Data to GPIO #4. Then connect a 4.7K resistor from Data to VCC.

Then run as root: modprobe w1-gpio and then modprobe w1-therm to attach the temperature submodule. Then you can run cat /sys/bus/w1/devices/28-*/w1_slave to read the temperature data from the bus

The first line has the CRC, if its "NO" then the data is corrupted. If you get a good CRC check, the second line has t=temperature in 1/1000 of a degree Centigrade. For example, below, the temperature is 24.5°C

Since 1-wire is bitbanged, its flakier than SPI or I2C. We have a short tutorial on using a DS18B20 sensor

WiFi support

We wanted to get our WiFI modules working, so we applied the RTL8192cu-based patches to the kernel. Please note that you almost certianly need a powered USB hub to run a wifi dongle.

Type ifconfig -a to verify that wlanN (wlan0, wlan1, etc) entry has been created.

You will have to edit /etc/network/interfaces with your SSID and password but after that, it should 'just work' - check iwconfig and iwscan if you're having problems

We have a tutorial on WiFi setup here

Bonjour Support

Bonjour is what Apple uses to make it easier to find new devices on a LAN. Instead of having to look up the IP address, there's a local name. This distro uses raspberrypi.local by default. All Apple machines have Bonjour servers. If you have ever installed iTunes, it comes with it. Other Windows users can get it from here - its called the print server but its what you want

Test by trying to ping raspberrypi.local when the Pi is booted and connected to Ethernet (or WiFi once you have configured WiFi)

sshd on Boot

This image has sshd on boot - that means you can immediately ssh in using raspberrypi.local! The ssh keys are generated on boot but since the user/pass is simply pi/raspberry you should not put this on an accessible network  until you've changed the password

Kernel Source

Want to compile your own modules? Or change the configuration of the kernel? Advanced users can find our kernel repo here

We do not have any tutorials on how to download, compile or install the linux kernel.