Banana PI M5 with OLED SSD1306 via I2C

BPI-M5/BPI-M2 Pro/BPI-M2S/BPI-CM4/BPI-CM5
1

Dear Forum, I have a Banana Pi M5 and i am trying to find a solution to display some information on a small OLED screen connected in the I2C PINs. I have followed the BPI-M5 wiki page installed the Wiring and RPi.GPIO for Amlogic and still no possibility to see the display connected.

Here are my OS details:

PRETTY_NAME="Armbian 22.08.7 Bullseye" 
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux" 
VERSION_ID="11" 
VERSION="11 (bullseye)" 
VERSION_CODENAME=bullseye 
ID=debian 
HOME_URL="https://www.debian.org/" 
SUPPORT_URL="https://www.debian.org/support" 
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/"

Here are my questions:

  • What dts file you are using?
  • What overlay you are using to enable the i2c to be able to read and write through?
  • Did someone use Adafruit Blinka with this board? By default armbian-config showed: i2cA and i2cB overlays but there is no registry. I tried to port and create other i2c0 - i2c4 to try to enable it but without any success.

If i run i2cdetect -l

i2c-1	i2c       	DesignWare HDMI                 	I2C adapter 
i2c-0	i2c       	Meson I2C adapter               	I2C adapter

if i run i2cdetect -y 0

 0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  a  b  c  d  e  f 
00:                         -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --  
10: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --  
20: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --  
30: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --  
40: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --  
50: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --  
60: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --  
70: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

if i run gpiodetect

gpiochip0 [periphs-banks] (85 lines)  
gpiochip1 [aobus-banks] (15 lines)

If i try to use Adafriut and Blinka example i have this error:

python3 stats.py 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/pi-app/oled-test/OLED_Stats/stats.py", line 6, in <module>
    import board
  File "/pi-app/oled-test/.env/lib/python3.9/site-packages/board.py", line 137, in <module>
    from adafruit_blinka.board.bananapi.bpim5 import *
  File "/pi-app/oled-test/.env/lib/python3.9/site-packages/adafruit_blinka/board/bananapi/bpim5.py", line 12, in <module>
    SCL = pin.i2cPorts[0][1]
IndexError: tuple index out of range

Did somebody on this forum manage to connect an OLED to BPI-M5 and make it display some information like, hostname, load, etc?
Thank you very much for your time and help,
KR,
Dino

2

Hello friend and greetings to all. I am also in your same situation with i2c display. But I can not see only the i2c-0 bus which seems to be used for HDMI. Could you please indicate how you installed RPi.GPIO for Amlogic?

3

Hi Stefano,
You have 2 possibilities:

  1. Just use the https://wiki.banana-pi.org/Getting_Started_with_M5/M2Pro#RPi.GPIO steps.If you have compilation issues try install gcc 9 and symlink the gcc used during build from 10 version to 9. That worked for me
  2. Try installing it with pip install RPi.GPIO

The issue i see it in case of BPI-M5 is the that there is no documentation about device tree and how to work with them and overlays, also how to use fdtget and fdtput to enable/disable components in the device tree.
Good luck!
If will work for you please share here also how :slight_smile:
KR,
Dino

4

Hello everybody,

unfortunately after numerous attempts I too can not use i2c. I tested a version of ubuntu mate where i2c works but the GPIOs don’t. Some idea?

5

Hi Stefano, You mean you can use the I2C pins on the 40 pin layout? Or you just can see the i2c-0, the HDMI one with registry 0x30?

Thank you, Dino

6 
root@bananapi:/home/pi# i2cdetect -y 0
 0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  a  b  c  d  e  f
00:          -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
10: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
20: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
30: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
40: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
50: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
60: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
70: -- 71 -- -- -- -- -- --

On ubuntu mate, i see the my device connected to the 40 pins.