PlatformIO notes¶

Notes for using the PlatformIO CLI.

Table of Contents¶

Configuring PlatformIO
1. Packages for a project
Getting started
Serial communication
1. USB device debugging on OSX
Distribution

Configuring PlatformIO ¶

I will probably end up making another document on using PlatformIO, but for the sake of getting started, PlatformIO may be installed with

OSX:

brew install platformio

Linux:

sudo python -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/platformio/platformio/develop/scripts/get-platformio.py)"

Packages for a project ¶

You can install dependencies using

platformio lib install "Name"

Getting started¶

All of the supported micro-controller boards can be listed using

platformio boards

Narrowing the search options, to find, e.g. the Atmel AVR MCUs, can be achieved with

platform boards atmelavr

I’m using the Elegoo Uno MC, so will use the appropriate configuration

uno                          ATMEGA328P     16MHz        31.50KB   2KB     Arduino Uno

The appropriate development environment is then created using

mkdir dev-env
cd dev-env
platformio init --board uno 

Note that more than one board can be specified, by using additional --board flags. The output of the init command initializes the environment

The current working directory /Users/minerva/Developer/MCU/uno-test will be used for the project.

The next files/directories have been created in /Users/minerva/Developer/MCU/uno-test
include - Put project header files here
lib - Put here project specific (private) libraries
src - Put project source files here
platformio.ini - Project Configuration File

Next we create src/main.cpp, and include our MCU source code to be flashed to the unit.

platformio run -t upload

PlatformIO comes with multiple different target and environment flags

platformio run: Process all environments specified in platformio.ini
platformio run -t upload: Build project and upload firmware to the devices
platformio run -t clean: Clean project (delete compiled objects)
platformio run -e uno: Process only the uno environment

Serial communication¶

Serial communication with the MCU device is packaged into PlatformIO. We can monitor the MCU with

platformio device monitor -b [baudrate]

USB device debugging on OSX¶

It can be a little bit tentative sometimes to discover the right USB port on OSX. The command

system_profiler SPUSBDataType

will help indicate whether your device is discoverable or not. From experience, unplugging and pluggin the device back in can help a lot. Another useful thing to monitor are the

ls /dev/tty*
ls /dev/cu.*

outputs.

Distribution¶

PlatformIO can also act as a distribution tool if the environments are correctly defined.

Specifying dependencies¶

We can specify the dependencies for a specific environment, e.g. [env:uno] with

lib_deps =
  arduino
  SomePackageName

or for all environments under the [common_env_data] section. Dependencies are automatically installed when the environment is run.

More information can be seen here in the PlatformIO Docs.

Unit testing¶

TODO

Build flags¶

TODO