How to enable SPI on Raspberry Pi 3

Question

I run raspi-config, enable SPI from menu and get message

The SPI interface is enabled

But in console I see

/usr/bin/raspi-config: 597: /usr/bin/raspi-config: dtparam: not found

Is SPI Enabled? How to verify SPI?

Answer 1

That appears to be a spurious raspi-config error message (caused by a bad link to a dynamic portion of device tree).

Reboot.

SPI is enabled if /dev/spidev0.0 and /dev/spidev0.1 exist.

Answer 2

1. Run this command: sudo nano /boot/config.txt
2. Add this at the end of the file: dtparam=spi=on
3. Save file pressing: CTRL+X, Y and Enter
4. Reboot your system: sudo reboot

Answer 3

In addition to the above mentioned answers, you can also test if the port is really enabled and working properly as per rasp.'docs: , by connecting a wire between MOSI and MISO and running the following commands:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/raspberrypi/linux/rpi-3.10.y/Documentation/spi/spidev_test.c
gcc -o spidev_test spidev_test.c
./spidev_test -D /dev/spidev0.0
spi mode: 0
bits per word: 8
max speed: 500000 Hz (500 KHz)

FF FF FF FF FF FF
40 00 00 00 00 95
FF FF FF FF FF FF
FF FF FF FF FF FF
FF FF FF FF FF FF
DE AD BE EF BA AD
F0 0D

Basically it is just a loopback test.

Note:

This does not test CE0 and CE1