Installing PIP on the Intel Edison

The Intel Edison comes ready to work with Python, but most Python developers would prefer to have access to PIP for managing their installed python packages. I've recently gone through the process of installing PIP on the Intel Edison and wanted to post the instructions for anyone who wants to do the same.

Connect to the Edison

Start by connecting to the Edison through the serial port. I'm running Ubuntu, hence the sudo screen.

sudo screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200

Then you will want to make sure that your Edison is connected to the internet.

configure_edison --wifi

You will have to wait a few seconds, then select your network and enter your password.

Add Third Party Libraries

Intel Edison is powered by Yocto but pip is not in the official repositories, therefore we need to add the unofficial repositories. We began getting the latest Intel IoT Developer Kit libraries.

echo "src intel-iotdk http://iotdk.intel.com/repos/1.1/intelgalactic" > /etc/opkg/intel-iotdk.conf

Begin by adding the repositories using vi.

vi /etc/opkg/base-feeds.conf

Add the following three lines:

src/gz all http://repo.opkg.net/edison/repo/all
src/gz edison http://repo.opkg.net/edison/repo/edison
src/gz core2-32 http://repo.opkg.net/edison/repo/core2-32

Save and close the file. Then update the package list.

opkg update

PIP is now installed, however it requires setuptools to be installed before PIP can install any Python packages. The setuptools package is now included with the latest version of pip. To upgrade pip to the latest version you can now run

pip install --upgrade pip