Aiko Engine MP (microPython)

Contents

• Overview
• Installation
• Resources

Pages

• Contributors
• Software license

Overview

The Aiko Engine MP is compatible with Aiko Services, which is a distributed system that supports embedded devices as networked Services.

The Aiko Engine MP provides ...

• Modular microPython based framework
• Abstractions for event handling, networking and timers
• End user Wi-Fi configuration via a Wi-Fi Access Port and web server
• Application firmware OTA (Over The Air) upgrader
• Low-level LED panel graphics functions
• Multiple OLED screens or color TFT LCD screen
• Integrates MQTT and distributed services
• Supports LCA2022 SwagBadge project
• Supports LCA2021 SwagBadge project
• Supports LCA2018 LoliBot robotics project
• Supports LCA2017 IoTuz project
• Tested on a range of ESP32 development boards

Installation

• Download the source code from https://github.com/geekscape/aiko_engine_mp

    git clone https://github.com/geekscape/aiko_engine_mp
    cd aiko_engine_mp

• The master branch supports the majority of hardware options. However, the SwagBadge 2022 is currently supported on the swagbadge_2022 development branch

    git checkout swagbadge_2022

• Ensure you have a compatible hardware board and compatible microPython port

• Make sure you have a Python virtual environment set-up, including virtualenvwrapper

• Create mkvirtualenv micropython and work on the new virtual environment

    workon micropython

• Install esptool and mpfshell

    pip install esptool
    pip install -U mpfshell

• Plug in your ESP32 device and make sure you can see it, e.g ls -l /dev/tty.* will show a serial device file like /dev/ttyUSB0 or /dev/tty.wchserial1410

• Export the serial port to an environment variable, so mpfshell can use it, e.g export AMPY_PORT=<device_file> where device_file is the device file shown by the ls -l command above

• Download latest microPython

• Note: The SwagBadge 2022 currently requires microPython version 1.17

• Flash microPython

    ./scripts/flash_micropython.sh

• Run the Aiko Engine MP flash script, which loads this firmware onto the device

    ./scripts/mpf_script.sh ./scripts/aiko.mpf

• For microPython development, the Thonny IDE is highly recommended

Note: For Lolin32-Lite boards, the serial port can be notoriously problematic and requires a slight delay in order for the connection to occur properly. If you're seeing errors that look like Could not enter raw repl then this is probably related.

For mpfshell (version v0.9.1 and earlier) on Mac OS X or Windows, this problem may be fixed via this patch

Resources

Associated open-source ESP32 hardware projects ...

• OHMC team's - LCA2022 SwagBadge

• OHMC team's - LCA2021 SwagBadge

• John Spencer's - LCA2018 LoliBot robot

• OHMC team's - LCA2017 IoTuz