Lopy and Node-Red communication

[newkit]

Hi,

I’ve got a Lopy with Pytrack extension board and have been playing around with GPS coordinates.

Now I’d like to connect to Node-Red, which I installed on my PC (Windows 10). What is the easiest way to send data between Lopy and Node-Red for testing purposes?

I’ve tried this via the serial port but did not succeed. I’ve to admit I’m bit of a beginner at this and hoping that someone can point me in the right direction.

I installed the serial nodes in Node-Red and set this to COM3 (9600 baud rate). This shows the Lopy as connected.

Then I created a simple loop to print every 5 seconds from the Lopy. I can see this in the REPL console but not in the debug window in Node-Red. I figured instead of print, I should use uart.write and added the following bits to my code:

from machine import UART

uart = UART(0, 9600)

while True:
    time.sleep(5)
    uart.write("Test")

However still no output in Node-Red. Also tried 115200 baud rate and UART1.

Where am I going wrong? Or is there perhaps a better way to communicate between Lopy and Node-Red, other than the serial port?

Also a little sub-question: how can I send l76.coordinates of the Lopy to Node-Red? I know uart.write expects bytes object or string, not tuple. Is there an easy way to convert or an alternative to uart.write that works with tuple?

Many thanks in advance!

[Matthew Felgate 0]

Hi

Maybe using MQTT on Lopy to send messages into Node-Red (via a MQTT broker) may be a way to do it?

[newkit]

Thanks @Matthew-Felgate-0, that's a good suggestion. Will give MQTT a try.

Still curious though where I went wrong on the serial port. If someone sees an obvious error, please let me know.

[Matthew Felgate 0]

Hi @newkit

I have got node-red Serial node working. In Node Red I have /dev/tty.usbmodemPy91b3c81. Your board will have a similar name. note: make sure there is no empty space at the end of the name and baud rate set to 115200.

Node Red debug output:

04/03/2021, 15:08:12node: 7cae131c.d729ec
msg.payload : string[6]
"hello↵"
04/03/2021, 15:08:12node: 7cae131c.d729ec
msg.payload : string[13]
"print hello↵"
04/03/2021, 15:08:12node: 7cae131c.d729ec
msg.payload : string[2]
"↵"

I think your serial connection in terminal or Visual Studio will need to be closed else you won't get the data into Node-Red. (I think serial data can only be read at one place at a time)

Here is my code for reference:

boot.py

from machine import UART
import os
uart = UART(0, 115200)
os.dupterm(uart)

main.py

import time

print('Hello World!')

while True:
    uart.write('hello\n')
    print('print hello\n')
    time.sleep(5)

print('The End.')

Let me know if that works for you?

[newkit]

Brilliant @Matthew-Felgate-0 the example is working for me and I was able to integrate this into my project. Thanks!

But now you also got me interested in MQTT :)

I followed some of the examples from here and here.

However I always run into the same error leading back to the mqtt library:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "main.py", line 19, in <module>
  File "/flash/lib/mqtt.py", line 65, in connect
OSError: Network card not available

This is line 65 in the connect function:

self.sock = socket.socket()

I tried various MQTT brokers, e.g. HiveMQ ,test.mosquitto.org, as well running mosquito locally.

But I just can’t get past the above error.

Any idea?