micropython-samples/PICOWEB.md

Running Picoweb on hardware devices

This has regularly caused dificulty on the forum.

The target hardware is assumed to be running official MicroPython firmware.

This repo aims to clarify the installation process. Paul Sokolovsky's Picoweb code is unchanged except for the name of the logging library. The demos are trivially changed to use IP '0.0.0.0' and port 80.

To install on a hardware platform such as ESP32 or Pyboard D it is necessary to copy this directory and its contents (including subdirectories) to the target. If using rshell on an ESP32 change to this directory, at the rshell prompt issue

/my/tree/PicoWeb> rsync . /pyboard

This may take some time.

At the REPL connect to the network and determine your IP address

>>> import network
>>> w = network.WLAN()
>>> w.ifconfig()

issue

>>> from picoweb import example_webapp

or

>>> from picoweb import example_webapp2

Then point your browser at the IP address determined above.

Note that some platforms will have uasyncio installed as frozen bytecode: in such cases there is no need to copy the uasyncio subdirectory (if you do, it will be ignored).

ESP8266

RAM limitations require the use of frozen bytecode, and getting the examples running is a little more involved. Create a directory on your PC and copy the contents of this directory to it. Then add the files inisetup.py, _boot.py and flashbdev.py which may be found in the MicroPython source tree under ports/esp8266/modules. You may also want to add a custom connect module to simplify connection to your WiFi. Then build the firmware. The script I used was

#! /bin/bash

# Test picoweb on ESP8266

DIRECTORY='/home/adminpete/temp/picoweb'

cd /mnt/qnap2/data/Projects/MicroPython/micropython/ports/esp8266

make clean
esptool.py  --port /dev/ttyUSB0 erase_flash

if make -j 8 FROZEN_MPY_DIR=$DIRECTORY
then
    sleep 1
    esptool.py --port /dev/ttyUSB0 --baud 115200 write_flash --flash_size=detect -fm dio 0 build/firmware-combined.bin
    sleep 4
    rshell -p /dev/ttyUSB0 --buffer-size=30 --editor nano
else
    echo Build failure
fi

For the demos you will need to make the example_webapp.py source file and squares.tpl accessible in the filesystem. The following rshell commands, executed from this directory or the one created above, will make these available.

path/to/repo> mkdir /pyboard/picoweb
path/to/repo> mkdir /pyboard/picoweb/templates
path/to/repo> cp picoweb/example_webapp.py /pyboard/picoweb/
path/to/repo> cp picoweb/templates/squares.tpl /pyboard/picoweb/templates/

Documentation and further examples

See the PicoWeb docs

Note that to run under official MicroPython, references to ulogging in these demos must be changed to logging. You may also want to change IP and port as above.