ENG-CANSAT-PICO-THONNY

Abstract

There is no need for a specific development environment to work with a MicroPython plateforms.

A simple text editor is quite enough to write python scripts.

Command line utility like mpremote can be used to copy/run python scripts on the board.

Thonny editor

By the way, a enhanced tool like Thonny IDE can definitively improve the user experience and interaction with the Pico.

Thonny is multi-plateform editor running on Linux, Windows, Mac.

The beauty about Thonny Python Script editor is that Thonny is written in Python.

Thonny IDE is a great python script editor can also be used with MicroPython Microcontrolers:

• Raspberry-Pi Pico
• RP2040 base MicroPython board (like PYBStick RP2040 or MicroMod-RP2040, etc)
• ESP32 under MicroPython
• ESP8266 under MicroPython
• etc

Thonny offers great features for MicroPython microconroler:

• transfer script to MicroPython microcontroler.
• manage files on the MicroPython microcontroler.
• run script against MicroPython microcontroler.
• using the micropython interactive command line (named REPL)
• generating graphical data (an awesome feature)

Install Thonny IDE

Thonny website contains the required instruction to install Thonny IDE.

On Raspberry-Pi

Just open a terminal and execute the following command line:

$ sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

This will upgrade the operating system and install the latest version of Thonny IDE.

On Linux

Python3 is available on almost every Linux operating system. So Thonny (which is written in Python) is installed with the pip3 Python Install Package software.

$ pip3 install thonny

Windows & Mac

Refer to the official Thonny.org documentation.

Working with Thonny

The Thonny environment look very sober at first sight.

Don't be fooled by this simplicity, Thonny do have everything you need under the hood.

From top to bottom:

• The Menubar,
• The Toolbar (with icones),
• Text/code editor is the main part
• A Shell interface (at the bottom) used to quickly test Python code.

Thonny and MicroPython

By default, Thonny use the computer's Python interpreter in the "Shell" section.

So to work with a MicroPython board, the user must inform Thonny to use the appropriate shell.

For instance the REPL shell exposed by the MicroPython microcontroler on its serial interface.

Just click and the "shell selection" popup at the bottom-right corner of the screen. In the popup menu selects the "MicroPython" entry attached to the MicroPython board.

Once the entry selected, Thonny does establish a connection with the MicroPython command line interpreter (REPL) running on the MicroPython board.

If the connection fails then you can press the "stop" button on the toolbar to make a new connection attempt.

The image here below MicroPython shell (REPL, as it is executed on the microcontroler). This would work the same for any of the RP2040 based microcontroler (like the MicroMod-RP2040, PYBStick RP2040, etc).

LED Blinking

Now that we have selected the MicroPython REPL as interactive shell, can use it to control the Pico onboard LED.

The Pico onboard LED is attached to the pin GP25.

It can be controled with few lines of codes, just key-in them directly in the REPL session

from machine import Pin
led = Pin(25, Pin.OUT)
led.value(1) # allume la LED
led.value(0) # éteint la LED

The following screen capture just show the results of entering the command lines.

by entering led.value() without parameter, you can query the current pin state (1 for High level, 0 for Low level).

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Written by Meurisse D. for MCHobby