I2C Setup

Instructions for setting up and using the I2C interface on the Raspberry Pi.

Installation

Add the I2C drivers to the Linux Kernel.

sudo modprobe i2c-dev
sudo modprobe i2c-bcm2708

Once the drivers have been added to the Kernel the I2C will appear as /dev/i2c-0 and /dev/i2c1.

To load the drivers every boot add it to config file /etc/modules

sudo nano /etc/modules

add i2c-dev and i2c-bcm2708 to the end of the file.

The drivers will be loaded at boot time.

Download and install the i2c tools. This is not essential but it is useful for testing I2C devices from the command prompt.

sudo apt-get install i2c-tools

This setup process has been tested on the following Raspberry Pi linux distributions