ECE434 Project - BBIO in Python Project

Team members: Eric Morse Joshua Key

Grading Template
I'm using the following template to grade. Each slot is 10 points. 0 = Missing, 5=OK, 10=Wow!

 09 Executive Summary 09 Packaging 09 Installation Instructions 09 User Instructions 09 Highlights 09 Theory of Operation 09 Work Breakdown 09 Future Work/Conclusions 09 Hackster.io 09 Demo/Poster 00 Late Comments: Have a good day.

Score: 90/100

(Inline Comment)

Executive Summary
Picture that summarizes the project.

BBIO are a group of library files for GPIOD that are written in C that uses Python wrappers to run it in Python. Our project is to rewrite the Python to be fully in Python rather than using wrappers.

What works: The GPIO, UART, and ADC capabilities will now run the same way they normally would, except the Python does not use a Python wrapper.

What isn't working. The programs have only been tested on the BeagleBone Black with kernel 4.19. The BBIO programs may not function correctly on other kernels or BeagleBones.

Conclusion: The BBIO library no longer requires a Python wrapper as all of the functions interact with the BeagleBone directly from Python.

Packaging
This project has no hardware, but the code library must be run on a BeagleBone Black with Ubuntu kernel 4.19 running on it.

Installation Instructions
"sudo pip3 install BBIOPY==0.1.3" will install the bbiopy package to your device.

In your code, use "from bbiopy import GPIOmay" to load the GPIOmay functions into the workspace of your code. "import bbiopy" does nothing.

List of files that can be imported from bbiopy:

GPIOmay, which is the general gpiod library.

uart, which handles uart functionality.

PinMux, which handles pin multiplexing (already called from GPIOmay).

adc, which handles analog to digital conversion.

User Instructions
The programmer has to import the library into the code that they write and call the gpiod functions from that library.

Highlights
We created a full drop-in replacement of gpiod's pywrapper in C to a full python implement of gpiod for python programmers. It has full gpiod functionality with gpio pin event detection and setting outputs on gpio pins. It supports setting directions during setup. It also supports setting up multiple gpio pins at the same time, which is how gpiod differs from regular gpio. It has full support for UART functionality, as well as ADC conversions.

Theory of Operation
The library is a drop-in replacement of the py-wrapper version of BBIO gpiod. A programmer would import the library files into the code they write and call the functions.

.setup to setup a gpio pin.

.output to configure the output of a gpio pin that has been setup already.

.add_event_detect to detect a change in the value of a gpio pin, and go to a callback function when it changes.

.cleanup to close all memory allocations and remove all pins.

Work Breakdown
Joshua Key and Eric Morse did pair-programming.

We worked the entire project and all modules together.

We completed all GPIO functionality of GPIOD, including event detection.

We completed all UART functionality of GPIOD.

We also completed all PinMux and ADC (Analog to Digital Conversion) of GPIOD.

Mark Yoder did initial work on GPIOmay.py, and worked most of it, except event detection.

Future Work
The columns are being changed in an update to BBIO, which will mean that the columns of our table will need to be changed to reflect that. The code should work fine, but maintenance of the code will need to happen if it does not work under any new update.

Conclusions
In the near future, there will be a new image for the 4.19 Black kernel that will switch the Consumer and the Name for gpioinfo. This will remove an error that we had to work around, which will require an update to implement. Additional functionality will need to be implemented to both the C and the Python library.