adafruit-ampy

ampy

MicroPython Tool (ampy) - Utility to interact with a CircuitPython or MicroPython board over a serial connection.

Ampy is meant to be a simple command line tool to manipulate files and run code on a CircuitPython or MicroPython board over its serial connection. With ampy you can send files from your computer to the board's file system, download files from a board to your computer, and even send a Python script to a board to be executed.

Note that ampy by design is meant to be simple and does not support advanced interaction like a shell or terminal to send input to a board. Check out other MicroPython tools like rshell or mpfshell for more advanced interaction with boards.

Installation

You can use ampy with either Python 2.7.x or 3.x and can install it easily from Python's package index. On MacOS or Linux, in a terminal run the following command (assuming Python 3):

pip3 install --user adafruit-ampy

On Windows, do:

pip install adafruit-ampy

Note on some Linux and Mac OSX systems you might need to run as root with sudo:

sudo pip3 install adafruit-ampy

If you don't have Python 3 then try using Python 2 with:

pip install adafruit-ampy

Once installed verify you can run the ampy program and get help output:

ampy --help

You should see usage information displayed like below:

Usage: ampy [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  ampy - Adafruit MicroPython Tool

  Ampy is a tool to control MicroPython boards over a serial connection.
  Using ampy you can manipulate files on the board's internal filesystem and
  even run scripts.

Options:
  -p, --port PORT  Name of serial port for connected board.  [required]
  -b, --baud BAUD  Baud rate for the serial connection. (default 115200)
  -d, --delay DELAY Delay in seconds before entering RAW MODE (default 0)
  --help           Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  get  Retrieve a file from the board.
  ls   List contents of a directory on the board.
  put  Put a file on the board.
  rm   Remove a file from the board.
  run  Run a script and print its output.

If you'd like to install from the Github source then use the standard Python setup.py install (or develop mode):

python3 setup.py install

Note to run the unit tests on Python 2 you must install the mock library:

pip install mock

Usage

Ampy is made to talk to a CircuitPython MicroPython board over its serial connection. You will need your board connected and any drivers to access it serial port installed. Then for example to list the files on the board run a command like:

ampy --port /dev/tty.SLAB_USBtoUART ls

You should see a list of files on the board's root directory printed to the terminal. Note that you'll need to change the port parameter to the name or path to the serial port that the MicroPython board is connected to.

Other commands are available, run ampy with --help to see more information:

ampy --help

Each subcommand has its own help, for example to see help for the ls command run (note you unfortunately must have a board connected and serial port specified):

ampy --port /dev/tty.SLAB_USBtoUART ls --help

Configuration

For convenience you can set an AMPY_PORT environment variable which will be used if the port parameter is not specified. For example on Linux or OSX:

export AMPY_PORT=/dev/tty.SLAB_USBtoUART
ampy ls

Or on Windows (untested) try the SET command:

set AMPY_PORT=COM4
ampy ls

Similarly, you can set AMPY_BAUD and AMPY_DELAY to control your baud rate and the delay before entering RAW MODE.

To set these variables automatically each time you run ampy, copy them into a file named .ampy:

# Example .ampy file
# Please fill in your own port, baud rate, and delay
AMPY_PORT=/dev/cu.wchusbserial1410
AMPY_BAUD=115200
# Fix for macOS users' "Could not enter raw repl"; try 2.0 and lower from there:
AMPY_DELAY=0.5

You can put the .ampy file in your working directory, one of its parents, or in your home directory.