ESP32 daemon in toit for use with Pharo Smalltalk

[robvanlopik]

Exposing the capabilities of a microcontroller for use on another computer with another programming language is not uncommon. Think of Firmata on Arduino, or PiGPIO on Raspberry Pi. In Pharo I have a framework for this, using that kind of firmware. Having followed toit for over a year, I thought it was time to build another bridge. The daemon is written in toit, the other side is a driver for Pharo and communication is through MQTT. See my repo. I hope somebody finds this useful, at least the idea; I must confess this is the first time in many years that I used a programming language other than smalltalk.

I want to add at least out-of-band messages like notifications of pin state changes.

BTW. Can someone point me to some documentation about the use of "assets" and especially how to create them?

[kasperl]

@robvanlopik Assets are briefly explained here: https://github.com/toitlang/toit#adding-container-assets.

[floitsch]

Also, we plan on porting Artemis' specification file to standard Toit.
This means that you could then just write a simple specification with the constants in it. Something like (once it's Yaml and not JSON):

containers:
  pharo-daemon:
    entrypoint: daemon.toit
    git: https://github.com/robvanlopik/toit-pharo.git
    properties:
      host: test.mosquitto.org
      port: 1883
      pins: [2, 4, ... ]
      output-pins: ...
      adc: [32,33,34,35,36,39]
      dac: [25, 26]
      i2c: [21, 22]
      sda: 21
      sdc: 22

Also planned is then a way to let Jaguar consume such a file. Like: jag flash foo.specification.

I can't say when we will get around to make that happen, but I think that would be neat.

[robvanlopik]

Yes, I had hoped there would be an utility to convert a JSON-encoded map to an assets file you could use in jag

[floitsch]

The 'assets' command isn't yet piped through Jaguar, but you can use the assets tool that is in the SDK directory.
For example, on my Linux machine, I was able to move the board-description outside the daemon.

board_description.json

{
    "client-name": "test1",
    "host": "test.mosquitto.org",
    "port": 1883,
    "pin-list": [2,4,5,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,21,22,23,25,26,27,32,33,34,35,36,39],
    "output-list": [2,4,5,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,21,22,23,25,26,27,32,33],
    "adc-list": [32,33,34,35,36,39],
    "dac-list": [25,26],
    "i2c-list": [21,22],
    "sda": 21,
    "scl": 22
}

Then I modified the daemon.toit:

diff --git a/daemon.toit b/daemon.toit
index e6ae32a..c204204 100644
--- a/daemon.toit
+++ b/daemon.toit
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@ import gpio.pwm
 import gpio.adc show Adc
 import gpio.dac show Dac
 import i2c
+import system.assets

 import net
 import mqtt
@@ -19,26 +20,25 @@ import device
 VERSION ::= "0.1"

 // --- data that should come from assets
-ClientName := "test1"
-Host := "test.mosquitto.org"
-Port := 1883
-// leave out 1 and 3 because used for uart -- jag monitor
-PinList := 
-  [2,4,5,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,21,22,23,25,26,27,32,33,34,35,36,39]
-OutputList := 
-  [2,4,5,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,21,22,23,25,26,27,32,33]
-ADCList := [32,33,34,35,36,39]
-DACList := [25,26]
-I2CList := [21,22]
-SDA ::= 21
-SCL ::= 22
+DECODED_ASSETS ::= json.decode assets.decode["config"]
+
+ClientName := DECODED_ASSETS["client-name"]
+Host := DECODED_ASSETS["host"]
+Port := DECODED_ASSETS["port"]
+PinList := DECODED_ASSETS["pin-list"]
+OutputList := DECODED_ASSETS["output-list"]
+ADCList := DECODED_ASSETS["adc-list"]
+DACList := DECODED_ASSETS["dac-list"]
+I2CList := DECODED_ASSETS["i2c-list"]
+SDA ::= DECODED_ASSETS["sda"]
+SCL ::= DECODED_ASSETS["scl"]

Finally, I created the assets and installed them:

~/.cache/jaguar/sdk/tools/assets create -e tmp.assets
~/.cache/jaguar/sdk/tools/assets -e tmp.assets add config board_description.json
jag container install pharo daemon.toit --assets tmp.assets

[robvanlopik]

Thanks, that's exactly what I had in mind. BTW, where do I find the sdk in other OSs?

[floitsch]

All SDKs can be found on the release page

[floitsch]

Looks nice.
The coding conventions aren't really Toit, so there are some places where I had a bit of trouble reading the code ("Capitalized" means "type" to my brain :), but otherwise looks good.

Cool how much functionality is packed into fewer than 200 lines of code.

[robvanlopik]

To my smalltalk brain capitalized means global. And I couldn't resist CamelCase.

…

On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 4:36 PM Florian Loitsch ***@***.***> wrote: Looks nice. The coding conventions aren't really Toit, so there are some places where I had a bit of trouble reading the code ("Capitalized" means "type" to my brain :), but otherwise looks good. Cool how much functionality is packed into fewer than 200 lines of code. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1512 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ALRT6M5ORBKQRS5LG7H6WY3W5MTBRANCNFSM6AAAAAAWD7SODE> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>