is there anyway to scan I2C using pure Python libraries

Question

I am trying to write a script which will scan I2C interface and check what slaves available. The only way I saw so far is by command i2cdetect -y 1 which will list available I2C slaves. Is there any python library for doing that ?

Answer 1

Any method of I2C scanning has risks. Look at the man pages for the i2c_detect command.

Here is a simple method using (my) pigpio.

#!/usr/bin/env python

import pigpio

pigpio.exceptions = False # handle errors

pi = pigpio.pi()

for bus in range(2):
   for x in range(0x08, 0x79):
      h = pi.i2c_open(bus, x)
      if h >= 0:
         s = pi.i2c_read_byte(h)
         if s >= 0:
            print("device {} found on bus {}".format(x, bus))
         pi.i2c_close(h)

pi.stop()

Answer 2

The Adafruit Blinka library implements an i2c scan function.

import board
import busio

i2c = busio.I2C(board.SCL, board.SDA)
print(i2c.scan())