All working now. Due to the most recent reply from Doug, I converted from having the systemd service file in /lib/ to /etc/ (not sure if that made any difference). The most recent problem was that the program would only start at boot up if the keyboard was connected. The problem was solved by changi...

Thanks Doug

I had already given up on cron and rc.local and attempted the auto start with system.d.

Will try adding that line to the service and see what happens.

Paul

I have finally managed to get close to having my program start automatically when the pi zero is booted up, but not quite in the way I would find ideal. I am using the 'systemd' method, which I confess is a little confusing to me, but it only works if the pi config is set to boot up with a monitor a...

Just realised I have made a big mistake the 'rc.local' method is not working at all. I got confused and tried the basic method to achieve an auto start and that did work in precisely the way it is intended to i.e. it starts the program every time there is an ssh connection or whenever a terminal win...

Opto isolator used and working perfectly thanks to all who responded.

Further to the above, I have noticed that if the terminal window is closed the program stops. When I re-open the terminal window there is the usual warning "This channel is already in use, continuing anyway" and the program continues to run as it should. It may be normal but it's not what I wanted. ...

Hi I am pretty new to Raspberry pi and this may be a stupid question but I need help! I have written a small program that I want to start automatically on booting up. To achieve that I have edited the /etc/rc.local with the line 'python /home/pi/bcontrol.py &'. I have configured the system to boot u...

Essentially I need a Pi to monitor a 12v circuit. I want to Pi to know when a circuit switch has been closed. When that happens the Pi will take some action. Clearly I cannot connect the Pi directly to the 12v circuit and I need to place something in between. My knowledge of the hardware options is ...