Support Raspberry Pi

[bennuttall]

Current status: urepl fails to open on Raspberry Pi.

ImportError: cannot import name comports

I'll do some more digging and post my findings here.

[bennuttall]

Ok by installing the latest version of Serial I seem to have got it working.

I uninstalled the apt packages for Serial for py2 & py3:

sudo apt-get purge python-serial python3-serial -y

And installed the latest serial from PyPI:

sudo pip install pyserial --upgrade
sudo pip3 install pyserial --upgrade

I thought it would be harder than that but ok.

I will pass this on to my team and get it packaged for Raspbian.

[bennuttall]

On a related note, how do you reset the microbit? I have one running some code created using the web interface, I think, and I can't connect to it using urepl. Is there a method of reflashing it?

[ntoll]

Hi @bennuttall great stuff!

The only thing urepl brings to the party is that it auto-discovers the correct USB-serial port for the micro:bit. You could just use a "regular" tool like picocom (see the bottom of the README here: https://github.com/bbcmicrobit/micropython).

In terms of re-flashing the device, try this file as a very recent build from master with "vanilla" MicroPython (i.e. no Python script automatically installed with it).

https://github.com/ntoll/upyed/raw/master/firmware.hex

Give me a couple of days and we'll have this working in "mu". ;-)

[bennuttall]

Great - thanks. I'm keen to write code in Python on the Pi that can talk to the microbit but also do regular Python stuff like GPIO and requests! I'll have a play

[bennuttall]

Agh I'm giving this another try and failing to get it running again.

@ntoll Can you give it a try and let me know how you get on?

[bennuttall]

On a Pi, I mean

[ntoll]

Will do.

[ntoll]

Here's how to make it work:

git clone https://github.com/ntoll/microrepl.git
cd microrepl
sudo apt-get install python3-serial
python3 microrepl.py

However, I suggest this tool if not used - rather it's better to use, say, picocom like this:

sudo apt-get install picocom
picocom /dev/ttyACM0 -b 115200

Or even better, just use the REPL built into Mu.