PiTFT and Pi B+, no menu bar visible?

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MrJoshua
 
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PiTFT and Pi B+, no menu bar visible?

Post by MrJoshua »

Hi guys,

I just recently bought my first Pi (B+) and PiTFT (plus 4 hardware buttons I have added).
My intention is to use it to build a variation of the lapsepi timelapse controller.

So I've installed Raspian version that includes the pitft extras*, and I have got onto desktop using startx command, but there is no menubar at the bottom of the screen like I think there should be.

* from this page: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-pit ... sy-install
Could someone help suggest what I might have done wrong here?
I have not tried to progress the project beyond this point.

If anyone can help, please bear in mind I'm a complete linux noob, so I'm not familiar with anything at this point with linux beyond entering in command line stuff that's effectively fed to me I'm afraid!

Appreciate any help, thanks.

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tdicola
 
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Re: PiTFT and Pi B+, no menu bar visible?

Post by tdicola »

Sometimes it takes about a minute for the desktop to load so make sure to give it a little bit of time. If it still doesn't come up after a minute do you mind grabbing a picture of what you see when you run startx? Also can you reply with the command you're running to start x windows? Just curious to see exactly what's being run. Thanks!

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MrJoshua
 
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Re: PiTFT and Pi B+, no menu bar visible?

Post by MrJoshua »

Thanks for the reply - I've had it running like this for an hour or two so it's not that it's slow unfortunately. Thanks for the suggestion though.

The command I use at boot up is literally just this: startx
Is that correct or should I be doing something different to this?

Here's a pic. You'll notice that the icons are smaller than normal and this is from a framebuffer related command I found somewhere to shrink stuff on the desktop in an attempt to fit more on and in case I needed to do this to see the menu.

To be clear though the menu was not visible even before I did this.
Image

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adafruit2
 
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Re: PiTFT and Pi B+, no menu bar visible?

Post by adafruit2 »

something *odd* happened with your setup, can you try the 'easy install image'? never seen this particular thing, but something went amiss with your X11 !

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MrJoshua
 
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Re: PiTFT and Pi B+, no menu bar visible?

Post by MrJoshua »

Thanks - I will try installing again yes.

This will be a very dumb question I guess, but what is X11?

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_karl_p
 
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Re: PiTFT and Pi B+, no menu bar visible?

Post by _karl_p »

MrJoshua wrote:Thanks - I will try installing again yes.

This will be a very dumb question I guess, but what is X11?
X11 is a Window System used by *nix systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System

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MrJoshua
 
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Re: PiTFT and Pi B+, no menu bar visible?

Post by MrJoshua »

Ahh, that's really helpful thanks!

I've had a couple of machines that ran linux for test copies of servers, but I only touched them when I had to and didn't really learn much about linux.
I should do though as it would be very useful to learn!

I'm part way there I guess as I use Macs now instead of windows, and at least OSX is unix based as I understand it....
One step at a time! :D

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_karl_p
 
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Re: PiTFT and Pi B+, no menu bar visible?

Post by _karl_p »

MrJoshua wrote:Ahh, that's really helpful thanks!

I've had a couple of machines that ran linux for test copies of servers, but I only touched them when I had to and didn't really learn much about linux.
I should do though as it would be very useful to learn!

I'm part way there I guess as I use Macs now instead of windows, and at least OSX is unix based as I understand it....
One step at a time! :D
Yeah Linux is great!
A tip if you wanna learn Linux os fast is to install an os without a window system. Just run it with SSH and/or command line. When you're forcing yourself to use the command line you'll learn the system so fast.

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MrJoshua
 
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Re: PiTFT and Pi B+, no menu bar visible?

Post by MrJoshua »

Very true.

I struggle to remember exact syntax though unless it's stuff I use very frequently, so if I was working commandline I think I'd need to print a big poster of common stuff!

Anyway, the reinstall has just completed a moment ago and the menu bar is there now! :D
Not sure what I did wrong before but it all seems ok - thanks for the suggestions guys.

Now I need to figure where I was up to in respect of getting lapse Pi onto it, and how to get it to control a stepper driver like a pololu instead of just running a normal DC motor. Anyone know any projects where this has been done? I'm sort of joking - I'll get searching on google and here!!

Thanks

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