Programming Tutorials

  If you recently unboxed a Raspberry Pi 5, flashed Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm, and attempted to run your trusty Python scripts, you likely hit a wall. Scripts that have run reliably on the Pi 3 and 4 for years are suddenly throwing   RuntimeError: No access to /dev/mem ,   ModuleNotFoundError , or worse—running silently without actually toggling any pins. The industry-standard library  RPi.GPIO  is dead on the Raspberry Pi 5. Here is the architectural reason why, and the code-complete paths to get you back up and running. The Root Cause: The RP1 Southbridge To understand why your code broke, you have to look at the silicon. On Raspberry Pi models 1 through 4, the GPIO pins were controlled directly by the main Broadcom System-on-Chip (SoC). Libraries like  RPi.GPIO  worked by memory-mapping ( mmap ) specific physical addresses on the SoC to toggle bits directly. This was fast, but it was a "dirty" hack that bypassed the Linux kernel's subsystems. The Ras...

  If you have recently migrated to a Raspberry Pi 5 running Raspberry Pi OS (based on Debian 12 Bookworm), you have likely encountered a workflow-breaking error when attempting to install Python packages. Running a standard command like  pip install requests  now returns: error: externally-managed-environment × This environment is externally managed ╰─> To install Python packages system-wide, try apt install python3-xyz, where xyz is the package you are trying to install. For a decade,  sudo pip install  was the muscle memory for Raspberry Pi hobbyists and integrators. That command is now obsolete on modern Debian systems. This article explains why the operating system blocks this action and provides the architectural patterns required to deploy Python applications on the Raspberry Pi 5. Root Cause Analysis: PEP 668 The error stems from the implementation of  PEP 668  (Python Enhancement Proposal 668). In previous versions of Debian/Raspbia...