r/raspberry_pi • u/silverdatchery • 5d ago

Troubleshooting CardKB on Raspberry Pi 5

as the title says - anyone with any luck setting up an m5 cardkb on a pi 5? followed the instructions on this github post. running a standard 8gb pi 5 with pi os installed. while the software installs went fine, running "sudo cardkb &" returns this as a repeating error:

OSError: [Errno 121] Remote I/O error
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.13/dist-packages/cardkb/_main_.py", line 37, in main
data = bus.read_byte(address)

the pins are properly connected, i2c is on. only thing i haven't tried troubleshooting yet is deleting the scripts altogether and attempting a fresh install. am i overlooking anything obvious in solving this?

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4

u/EffectiveClient5080 5d ago

Been there with an I2C keypad build. 90% of the time it's SDA/SCL swapped or you're on the wrong /dev/i2c device. Run i2cdetect -y 1 first and look for 0x1f, reinstalling won't do a thing.

1

u/silverdatchery 3d ago

pins are correct, but i2cdetect returns no addresses whatsoever. just a blank scan on all available addresses. is there anything particular to the 5 that would keep these devices from talking?

3

u/Significant-Price695 5d ago

Small correction to the other reply: CardKB's address is 0x5f, so HCharlesB has the right one. What does your scan show?

2

u/HCharlesB 5d ago

Did you enable i2c via raspi-config? (I think that's what you mean by "i2c is on.")

You can check for the presence of the device using i2cdetect -y 1. It should list a device at 0x5F.

HTH

2

u/silverdatchery 3d ago

that’s the problem - pins are correct, i2c is on in both control center and in raspi-config, and i2cdetect runs. only problem is that the scan returns an entirely empty field. no address whatsoever. just the persistent error. i’m starting to fear that the pi 5 just refuses to talk with this lil gizmo