Could Not Determine Platform Error

Question

I am using the following tutorial to make a moisture sensor using a Raspberry Pi 4: https://www.instructables.com/Measuring-Soil-Moisture-Using-Raspberry-Pi/

When I have run my code, I get the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last): 
   File "/home/pi/project.py", line 5,
      in <module> am = Adafruit_MCP3008.MCP3008(clk = 11, cs = 8, miso = 9, mosi = 10)     
   File "home/pi.......Adafruit_MCP3008/MCP3008.py" line 41, in __init__ 
      gpio = GPIO.get_platform_gpio() 
   File "/home/pi......Adafruit_GPIO/GPIO.py", line 426, in get_platform_gpio
      raise RuntimeError('Could not determine platform.') 
 RuntimeError: could not determine platform.

I understand this has something to do with the code as per each "File" line i.e. the Adafruit code. Seems like the code might be out of date. Does anyone know how to fix this? Or any other good tutorials that use the same components to do the job?

Thank you!

Answer 1

Searching for that error in that function would suggest Adafruits library may be deprecated.

I would suggest using gpiozero and the MCP3008 class:

from gpiozero import MCP3008
from time import sleep

am = MCP3008(channel=0)

while True:
  moisture_value = am.value # Get the analog reading from the soil moist sensor
  per = moisture_value * 100 / 1023  # Converting the moisture value to percenta
ge
  print("Recorded moisture value is %s percentage" % per)
  if moisture_value >= 930:
    print(" No water, Can you please water me")
  elif moisture_value < 930 and moisture_value >= 350:
    print(" I'm sufficient ")
  elif moisture_value < 350 :
    print(" Stop drowning me!")
  sleep(1.5)