mm_pal (Memory Map Protocol Abstraction Layer)

Python package for providing an runtime access to embedded devices based on a memory map type interface.

Description

This package consists of base classes to build interfaces and a mock device used for testing and as an example of implementation.

Device connection such as serial and parsers such as json are used to get standard output.

Concept

Embedded devices are generally constrained and communication with runtime parameters can take up lots of resources. Since many users of microcontroller are familiar with the concept of a memory map or register map the Memory Map Manager can be used as and lightweight way of coordinating a single memory map for documentation, C structures, and python interface. The mm_pal provides the building blocks for a custom interface. All common functions related to connecting to the device, parsing output of the registers, and reading/writing to the registers are handled and only application specific functionality needs to be implemented. This can make development easier, especially when the registers are changing frequently.

Architecture

┏━━━━━━━━━━━┓       ┏━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ developer ┃       ┃ script  ┃
┗━━━━━▲━━━━━┛       ┗━━━━▲━━━━┛
      ┃                  ┃
 ┏━━━━┸━━━━┓       ┏━━━━━┸━━━━━┓
 ┃ my_cli  ◄━━━━━━━┫ my_app_if ┃
 ┗━━━━▲━━━━┛       ┗━━━━━▲━━━━━┛
      ┃    ┌────────┐    ┃
      ┃    │ mm_pal │    ┃
┌─────╂────┴────────┴────╂────────┐
│┏━━━━┸━━━┓          ┏━━━┸━━━┓    │
│┃ mm_cmd ◄━━━━━━━━━━┫ mm_if ┃    │
│┗━━━━━━━━┛          ┗━━━▲━━━┛    │
│                        ┃        │
│                ┏━━━━━━━┸━━━━━━━┓│
│                ┃ serial_driver ┃│
│                ┗━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━┛│
└────────────────────────╂────────┘
                         ┃
              ┏━━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━━┓
              ┃ my_embedded_device  ┃
              ┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

Installing package

To install mm_pal use pip:

pip install mm_pal --user

Note: only use python 3 which may require pip3

To install from sources:

./setup.py install --force --user

Note: setuptools package should be installed.

Using the package

This package is meant to be built upon. An example implementation is done with the mock_if and the mock_cli.

The mm_cmd is based on the cmd2 module is probably worth reading the documenation.

Useful commands

To regenerate documentation use: sphinx-apidoc -f -o docs/source/ mm_pal mock_pal; make html -C docs/

Testing

To test the package with pytest must be installed installed and updated.

Using ./setup.py test or tox will perform tests on the source package.

Special thanks to riotctrl as it served as a great example.