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Description:

pfxbrick 0.8.6

PFx Brick Python API

This repository contains a python package API for developing python scripts and applications which communicate with the PFx Brick. This package supports both USB and Bluetooth LE connections to the PFx Brick and is supported for Windows, macOS and linux.

Getting Started

OS Requirements

Supports Windows 10, version 16299 (Fall Creators Update) or greater
Supports Linux distributions with BlueZ >= 5.43
OS X/macOS support via Core Bluetooth API, from at least OS X version 10.11

Package Requirements

Python 3.6+
HIDAPI
Bleak
sphinx (for documentation)

Installation

Pre-install System requirements for linux
The pfxbrick package will require some packages to be installed suport access to USB and Bluetooth hardware drivers. Use your preferred package manager to install these packages:

libhidapi-dev
libudev-dev
libusb-1.0-0-dev
bluez
bluetooth
libbluetooth-dev

Pre-install System requirements for macOS
It is recommended to use the brew package manager to install the packages for USB hardware access. (Hardware support for Bluetooth will automatically be installed with pfxbrick setup.py install script which installs the bleak package with its dependency to pyobjc-framework-CoreBluetooth).
$ brew install hidapi

Installation with pip
The pfxbrick package can be installed with pip:
$ pip install pfxbrick

Install from source
Install directly from the source code with the setup.py script:
$ git clone https://github.com/fx-bricks/pfx-brick-py.git
$ cd pfx-brick-py
$ python setup.py install

Conda Virtual Environment
You can also use the package in a standalone conda virtual environment. To create a conda environment named pfxtest:
$ git clone https://github.com/fx-bricks/pfx-brick-py.git
$ cd pfx-brick-py
$ conda env create -f environment.yml
$ conda activate pfxtest
$ pip install -r requirements.txt
$ python setup.py install

Basic Usage
After installation, the package can imported:
$ python
>>> import pfxbrick
>>> pfxbrick.__version__
An example of the package can be seen below
import time
from pfxbrick import *

# Open a PFx Brick session instance
brick = PFxBrick()
brick.open()

# Get the PFx Brick configuration settings
brick.get_config()
brick.print_config()

# Get the user defined name of the PFx Brick
brick.get_name()
print(brick.name)

# Change the user defined name
brick.set_name('My Cool Brick')

# Turn on some lights for 5 sec
brick.light_on([1, 2, 7, 8])
time.sleep(5)
brick.light_off([1, 2, 7, 8])

# Set motor channel A to 50% speed gradually
for speed in range(50):
brick.set_motor_speed([1], speed)
time.sleep(0.1)
brick.stop_motor([1])

# Play an audio file with indefinite repeat
brick.repeat_audio_file("LongBeep1")
time.sleep(5)
brick.stop_audio_file("LongBeep1")

# End the session
brick.close()

Utility Scripts
The pfxbrick package will install some useful command line script applications in your python environment’s path. These include:

pfxcat - dumps the raw contents of a file on the PFx Brick to your console.
pfxdir - shows the directory listing of the PFx Brick file system
pfxget - gets a file from the PFx Brick
pfxput - copies a local host file on to the PFx Brick
pfxrm - delete a file from the PFx Brick
pfxrename - renames a file on the PFx Brick
pfxdump - dumps raw contents of PFx Brick flash memory
pfxinfo - discovers and shows information on all attached PFx Bricks
pfxmonitor - shows real time operational status of a PFx Brick
pfxtest - PFx Brick self test utility
pfxplay - plays an audio file on the PFx Brick
pfxrun - runs a script a file on the PFx Brick
pfxscan - scans for Bluetooth PFx Bricks and shows each brick’s information

After installing the pfxbrick package, you should be able to use any of these utilities directly from the command line as follows:
$ pfxinfo
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ A216 PFx Brick 16 MB ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ Serial Number : AF716069 │
│ ICD Version : 03.38 │
│ Firmware Version : 01.50 build 0555 │
│ USB vendor ID : 0x04D8 │
│ USB product ID : 0xEF74 │
│ Status : 0x00 Normal │
│ Errors : 0x00 None │
│ Name : My PFx Brick │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
$ pfxdir
ID Name Size Attr User1 User2 CRC32
0 sin150Hz.wav 132.3 kB 0000 000204CE 0000002C A712A54E
1 pink6dB.wav 132.3 kB 0000 000204CE 0000002C E6AACE61
2 files, 270.3 kB used, 16490.5 kB remaining
To find out more information on how to use each utility, use without arguments or with the -h argument.
$ pfxinfo -h
usage: pfxinfo [-h] [-c]

Show information for all attached PFx Bricks

optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-c, --config Show configuration details

Documentation

PFx Brick Interface Control Document (ICD) v.3.39 describes details of PFx Brick operation and communication protocol
Python API Reference Documentation

If you want to learn more about PFx Brick, check out our website.

Change Log

v.0.8.6

improved Bluetooth scanning and device discovery (thanks to a PR from @aholzel)
added new pfxscan command line utility

v.0.8.5

support for new ICD revision v.3.39
updates to the scripts and documentation

v.0.8.4

updated command line scripts to use argparse
added new GitHub test actions

v.0.8.3

updated command line scripts to install using setuptools console_scripts for better platform compatibility

v.0.8.1

bug fixes

v.0.8.0

all new support added for v.3.38 of ICD
support for v.1.50+ firmware which conforms to v.3.38 ICD
added command line utility scripts which are installed into the python path
revised documentation

v.0.7.1

revised documentation
improved BLE notifcation callbacks

v.0.7.0

added Bluetooth LE connection access with same functionality as USB
added convenience methods to PFxBrick class to execute actions directly
added support for running scripts on PFx Brick

v.0.6.2

fixed error reporting for file system access methods
fixed file directory refresh to ignore empty directory entries

v.0.6.1

changed the USB write function to ensure consistent cross-platform compatibility

v.0.6.0

finished implementing missing functionality
finished documentation
first public announced release

v.0.5.1

Added CHANGELOG.rst to project manifest

v.0.5.0

Initial release