Raspberry pi, python, detect os

Question

I am developing a django app which will run on the raspberry pi 3 in production.

I must know at the start of the app if its running on raspberry, or in dev environment. In dev i use fake sensor data instead of the pins.

Until now i used this method:

from sys import platform as _platform
test_environment = "win" in _platform or "darwin" in _platform

This was working nice for both my pc and mac, but now i would like to deploy this to an ubuntu webserver online. Raspbian is also a linux dist, so i need something else.

This is my currently working solution, but it hurts me deep inside. Any suggestion to make it better?

try:
    import RPi.GPIO as gpio
    test_environment = False
except:
    test_environment = True

Answer 1

Your solution is basically fine - I would improve it to just catch the specific error you're really looking for:

try:
  import RPi.GPIO as gpio
  test_environment = False
except (ImportError, RuntimeError):
  test_environment = True

This way if some other error occurs (out of memory, a poorly timed control-c, etc.), you won't believe you are in a test environment when you're not. You could also add more checks just to be sure (e.g. only check for import RPi.GPIO if you're on linux).

Answer 2

There's good info in this thread: https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/5100/detect-that-a-python-program-is-running-on-the-pi

import platform
def is_raspberry_pi() -> bool:
    return platform.machine() in ('armv7l', 'armv6l', 'aarch64')