HMI Pi3 debugger (experimental)

Like the debugger made on Windows 10 with Visual studio VBA, a debugger is now also made for Raspberry Pi3, raspian OS. Programmed in Phyton and the GUI in tkinter. See also the article about the VBA I/O debugger in this section. Just connect a serial connection from the MEGA board TX1/RX1 to a serial-to-USB converter, like usb-to serial or a APC220 serial radio to USB, and connect with one of the USB ports of the Raspberry. Be sure to set the boolean UseHmiSerial to true in the UserConfiguration.h. The serial port on the sketch should be set on 9600Baud, SERIAL_8N1. That’s all and that’s it… ehhh, maybe a little explanation about the USB port on the raspian (?); You have to program the right USB port to get things going on the raspberry Pi. Here is how to do it:

  • Start on the raspberry the command prompt LXTerminal and type the ls -l /dev/*USB* command.
    When a USB device connected, you will get something like /dev/ttyUSB0
  • in Python line 15, edit for making the right connection
    (default is ttyUSB0, the first connected USB port)
  • start the Phyton script

After starting the script, the same actions are performed as on the windows I/O debugger; sending the GMI message and fill the form with the known tags. Tags are dynamical updated, states are presented and some basic board information is presented. Masking and forcing is possible like the windows I/O debugger. The only thing to do is check/edit the port name (when not using the default USB port), the rest is automated, no editing necassery to get going!
Not possibe at the moment is the trending form, like the PC version. Data aquisition is possible.
A benefit of the raspberry is the portability, specially when equipted with a touchscreen with the size of the raspberry. On the photo an extra USB port is used: this is the dongle for a wireless mouse and keyboard.

 There is a difference between the windows and raspian version; Where you have to click with the right mouse button to present the context menu in the windows version, you will get a new window with the same function clicking with the left mouse button in the raspian version. In raspian it is possible to open more windows instead of one context menu in windows.