nanpy 0.6

Description

The main purpose of Nanpy is making programmers’ life easier, giving them something to create prototypes faster and use Arduino in a simpler way, thanks to a simple and powerful language like Python. Also Nanpy can run on RaspberryPi (tested with Raspbian http://www.raspbian.org/) so you can use it for communicating with Arduino :)

Let’s start with a classic example, turn on a led placed in the 13th pin..

Arduino.pinMode(13, Arduino.OUTPUT)

Arduino.digitalWrite(13, Arduino.HIGH)

There are a lot of projects able to do that. Nanpy can do more! Nanpy is easily extensible and can theoretically use every library, allowing you to create how many objects you want. We started supporting basic Arduino’s functions and OneWire, Lcd, Tone, Stepper and Servo libraries and they’re still incomplete. Let’s try to connect our 16x2 lcd screen on pins 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and print something!

lcd = Lcd([7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12], [16, 2])

lcd.printString(“Hello World!”)

really straightforward now, isn’t it? :)

Multithreading

What happens if you call methods in an async context? Nothing bad, all works! every call is mutually exclusive.. For example, suppose that two threads need to write on the same Lcd and in different positions at the same time… well, just call printString on the Lcd object specifying the position (row and column)

Thread_1 lcd.printString(“Hello First Row!”, 0, 0)

Thread_2 lcd.printString(“Hello Second Row!”, 0, 1)

Dependencies

Python (2.2 or later)

python-distribute (http://pypi.python.org/pypi/distribute)

python-serial

How to build and install

Nanpy is composed by a Python part, that provides a library to use Arduino via Python and a server firmware. You can install Nanpy on a Raspberry too :)

To install Nanpy just type (as root, requires python-setuptools):

python setup.py install

To build the firmware type:

cd firmware

export BOARD=uno (in case you use UNO board. Type ‘make boards’ for a complete list)

make

and then upload it on your board:

make upload

How to use

Serial communication

Nanpy autodetects the serial port for you, anyway you can specify another serial port and baudrate manually:

from nanpy import serial_manager

serial_manager.connect(‘/dev/ttyACM1’)

Import modules

Import all the modules you need :)

from nanpy import Arduino

from nanpy import (OneWire, Lcd)

…

How to contribute

Nanpy needs a lot of work to be a great and stable instrument. You can contribute with patches (bugfixing, writing improvements, creating support for a new library not included in Nanpy yet, writing examples and so on), writing documentation, reporting bugs or simply spreading Nanpy through the web if you like it :) If you have any doubt or problem, please contact me at <stagi.andrea@gmail.com>

Donate

Do you want to buy us a coffee? We need it to code all night long! if you like this project and you want to support it with some cents, please donate :) https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=TDTPP5JHVJK8J

License

This software is released under MIT License. Copyright (c) 2012 Andrea Stagi <stagi.andrea@gmail.com>