Electronic projects

Multiple electronic projects with (or without) MicroControllers

For managing the different programs and libraries used for my electronic projects, I use DevBox. For installing DevBox run:

curl -fsSL https://get.jetpack.io/devbox | bash

Once installed, just execute devbox shell to get into a Shell with all the programs a libraries you need. Within this DevBox Shell, you can still use your favourite IDEs.

The following programs are available in your DevBox shell, either provided directly by devbox (see devbox.json) or poetry (via pyproject.toml):

• Thonny
• ESPTool
• Python 3.11.
• Ruff, for code formatting.
• rshell, for remote execution of Python files.
• pre-commit, for making sure that committed files look nice.
• Poetry, for managing a Python Virtual environment with the project libraries.
• Arduino IDE
• mpremote, a command line tool or uploading files to Micro Python devices.
• pipkin, tool for installing distribution packages for MicroPython and CircuitPython.
• Fritzing, fantastic tool for creating schematics.

rshell cp program.py /pyboard/main.py

For installing libraries into the ESP32 running CircuitPython, I found easier to use [pipkin](GitHub - aivarannamaa/pipkin: Tool for installing distribution packages for MicroPython and CircuitPython) instead of circup. Some examples:

pipkin --port /dev/ttyUSB0 install adafruit-circuitpython-mcp230xx
pipkin --port /dev/ttyUSB0 install adafruit-circuitpython-charlcd

To setup WiFi on ESP32 with CircuitPython we need to create a file called settings.toml in the root of the file system.

1. Use Thonny to connect to the REPL of the board

2. Use the following snippet for creating the file

f = open('settings.toml', 'w')
f.write('CIRCUITPY_WIFI_SSID = "wifissid"\n')
f.write('CIRCUITPY_WIFI_PASSWORD = "wifipassword"\n')
f.write('CIRCUITPY_WEB_API_PASSWORD = "webpassword"\n')
f.close()

3. Restart the REPL using Thonny. Using the button will not work ¯_(ツ)_/¯

4. IP and MAC can be obtained using this code

import wifi

print("My MAC addr: %02X:%02X:%02X:%02X:%02X:%02X" % tuple(wifi.radio.mac_address))
print("My IP address is", wifi.radio.ipv4_address)

More details here.

For installing libraries, take the following precautions:

1. Close Thonny

2. Reconnect the ESP32 device (unplug, and plug again)

3. Install the libraries one by one

pipkin --port /dev/ttyUSB0 install adafruit-circuitpython-bme680
pipkin --port /dev/ttyUSB0 install adafruit-circuitpython-minimqtt