bricknil 0.9.2

Control LEGO(tm) BluetoothLE Hubs, Motors, and Sensors using Async Python

BrickNil [*] provides an easy way to connect to and program LEGO® Bluetooth hubs (including the PoweredUp Passenger Train 60197 and Cargo Train 60198 sets, and the Lego Duplo Steam Train 10874 and Cargo Train 10875 ) using Python on OS X and Linux. This work was inspired by this EuroBricks thread, and the NodeJS Powered-Up library. Unlike the official apps available from LEGO, BrickNil allows you to control multiple hubs with a single program, which lets you easily scale to programming large interactive systems.

BrickNil requires modern Python (designed and tested for 3.7) and uses asynchronous event programming built on top of the Curio async library. As an aside, the choice of async library is fairly arbitrary; and enabling another library such as asyncio or Trio should be straightforward.

An example BrickNil program for controlling the Train motor speed is shown below:

from curio import sleep
from bricknil import attach, start
from bricknil.hub import PoweredUpHub
from bricknil.sensor import TrainMotor

@attach(TrainMotor, name='motor')
class Train(PoweredUpHub):

    async def run(self):
        for i in range(2):  # Repeat this control two times
            await self.motor.ramp_speed(80,5000) # Ramp speed to 80 over 5 seconds
            await sleep(6)
            await self.motor.ramp_speed(0,1000)  # Brake to 0 over 1 second
            await sleep(2)

async def system():
    train = Train('My train')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    start(system)

• Free and open-source software: ASL2 license

• Documentation: http://virantha.github.io/bricknil

• Source: https://github.com/virantha/bricknil

[*]

BrickNil’s name comes from the word “Nil” (නිල්) in Sinhala which means Blue (as in Bluetooth)

Features

• Supports the following LEGO® Bluetooth systems:

  • PoweredUp hubs for trains 60197, 60198

  • Duplo trains 10874 and 10875

  • PoweredUp remote

  • Boost Move hub

• Supports the following actuators/sensors:

  • Internal motors

  • Train motors

  • Hub LED color

  • Boost vision sensor (color, distance)

  • Boost internal tilt/orientation/accelerometer

  • Boost external motor

  • External light

  • Hub buttons

  • Wedo external motor

  • Wedo tiltand motion sensors

• Fully supports Python asynchronous keywords and coroutines

  • Allows expressive concurrent programming using async/await syntax

  • The current implementation uses the async library Curio by David Beazley

• Cross-platform

  • Uses the Adafruit Bluefruit BluetoothLE library for Mac OS X

  • Uses the Bleak Bluetooth library for Linux and Win10; also tested on Raspberry Pi.