Installation instructions
Setup the Raspberry Pi
- Install the newest Raspberry Pi OS on a SD card.
- Insert the SD card and boot your Raspberry Pi. Setup the desktop, login to wifi and install your favorite software.
- You can find a beginners guide here: www.raspberrypi.org.
Install SmallBASIC
Right now there aren’t any SmallBasic packages or executable files for the Raspberry Pi. You have to compile SmallBASIC by yourself. Don’t be afraid, it is fairly easy.
Open a console and copy paste the following commands one at a time to build the SDL2-version:
cd ~
sudo apt-get install git autotools-dev automake gcc g++ libsdl2-dev libfreetype6-dev libfontconfig1-dev xxd libdrm-dev libgbm-dev
git clone https://github.com/Joe7M/SmallBASIC.git
cd SmallBASIC
git submodule update --init
sh autogen.sh
export PACKAGE_LIBS=-latomic
export CC=gcc
./configure --enable-sdl
make
sudo make install
The “make” command will take quite a while. Don’t get unpatient. After you finished the installation, you can type “sbasicg” in the console and SmallBASIC should start.
Usually it is quite nice to use the console version of SmallBASIC, especially if you don’t have any graphical output to the computer screen. To build the console version copy and paste the following commands one at a time after you build the SDL2-version:
./configure
make
sudo make install
Install SmallBasicPIGPIO
The SmallBasicPIGPIO plugin is already compiled for 32 bit system and available as a library. Since you used already “git” to install SmallBASIC, we will again use it to install the plugin. Open again a console and copy paste the following commands one at a time:
sudo apt install libpigpio-dev
cd ~
git clone https://github.com/Joe7M/SmallBasicPIGPIO.git
cd SmallBasicPIGPIO
ls
Now you can see the following directories:
- bin: it containes the plugin library libSmallBasicPIGPIO.so
- examples: some example basic files
- src: the source code.
If you have Raspberry Pi OS 64bit, you have to compile the plugin by yourself. For building the plugin just execute:
cd ~/SmallBasicPIGPIO/src
make
Start SmallBasic with the plugin
Start a console and type:
sudo sbasicg -m/home/pi/SmallBasicPIGPIO/bin -r 'file'
For example you want to execute led.bas in the example folder:
cd ~
cd SmallBasicPIGPIO/examples
sudo sbasicg -m/home/pi/SmallBasicPIGPIO/bin/ -r led.bas
To access the GPIO pins you need admin rights. Therefore start “sbasicg” always with the “sudo” command.
Now you can start coding your own programs. Check out the examples on this website for helpfull informations.