Linux Installation

Generic Linux devices are supported via SPIDEV, PiGPIO, MRAA, RPi native via BCM2835, or using LittleWire.

Automated Install (Deprecated - 32 bit only)

Designed & Tested on RPi - Defaults to SPIDEV on devices supporting it

  1. Install prerequisites if there are any (pigpio, MRAA, LittleWire libraries, setup SPI device etc)

  2. Download the install.sh file from http://tmrh20.github.io/RF24Installer/RPi/install.sh

    wget http://tmrh20.github.io/RF24Installer/RPi/install.sh
    

  3. Make it executable

    chmod +x install.sh
    

  4. Run it and choose your options

    ./install.sh
    

  5. Run an example from one of the libraries

    cd rf24libs/RF24/examples_linux
    

    Edit the gettingstarted example, to set your pin configuration

    nano gettingstarted.cpp
    make
    sudo ./gettingstarted
    

Manual Install (Deprecated - 32 bit only)

  1. Install prerequisites if there are any (pigpio, MRAA, LittleWire libraries, setup SPI device etc)

  2. Make a directory to contain the RF24 and possibly RF24Network lib and enter it

    mkdir ~/rf24libs
    cd ~/rf24libs
    

  3. Clone the RF24 repo

    git clone https://github.com/tmrh20/RF24.git RF24
    

  4. Change to the new RF24 directory

    cd RF24
    

  5. Configure build environment using the command:

    ./configure
    

    It automatically detects device and build environment.

    For overriding automatic detections, use command-line arguments, see

    ./configure --help
    

    for description.

  6. Build the library, and run an example file

    make
    sudo make install
    

cd examples_linux

Edit the gettingstarted example, to set your pin configuration

ano gettingstarted.cpp
make
sudo ./gettingstarted

Build using SPIDEV (Deprecated - 32 bit only)

  1. Make sure that spi device support is enabled and /dev/spidev<a>.<b> is present

  2. Manual Install using SPIDEV:

    ./configure --driver=SPIDEV
    make
    sudo make install
    

  3. See the gettingstarted example for an example of pin configuration

Note

The SPIDEV option should work with most Linux systems supporting spi userspace device.

Warning

SPIDEV is now always selected as the default driver because all other Linux drivers are being removed in the future. See RF24 issue #971 for rationale.

Note

See the MRAA documentation for more info on installing MRAA

Warning

SPIDEV is now always selected as the default driver because all other Linux drivers are being removed in the future. See RF24 issue #971 for rationale.