Sony Spresense PIO Platform

Description

PlatformIO integration for Sony Spresense board and Arduino core.

Boards

• Spresense (Sony CXD5602GG)

Frameworks

• Arduino

Installation

Open a PlatformIO Core CLI and execute

pio pkg install -g -p https://github.com/maxgerhardt/platform-sonyspresense.git

to install this platform.

In PIO Home, you should then have the Sony SPresense platform installed.

Updating

Due to a technicallity with how the Arduino framework's package.json is inside a subfolder but pulled from git, regular updating is broken. To update the platform, reinstall it cleanly using

pio pkg uninstall -g -p sonyspresense
pio pkg install -g -p https://github.com/maxgerhardt/platform-sonyspresense.git

First Test

In the PIO Home's platform view for Sony SPresense, you can go into the "Examples" tab and import the "arduino-blink" example via the "Import" button.

When the import is done, you should have a VSCode project open that has the Arduino Blink example imported into it.

From there, open the src/main.cpp and check that there are no errors shown. (If yes, you might need to execute the "build" task).

In the project tasks then, execute the "Build Task". It should end with "success".

Use the above shown "Upload" task to upload the firmware onto a connected SPresense board, or directly use "Upload and Monitor" to also open the device (serial) monitor after that.

As reported here, this should make the LED1 of the board blink.

spresense-blink.MOV

Special Project Tasks

As shown in the screenshot above, this platform impleemnts the "Erase" and "Burn Bootloader" command also available in the Arduino IDE. The "Erase" command will erase the firmware on the board. The "Burn Bootloader" command will burn the SDK firmwares (loader.espk, gnssfw.espk, ..) onto the board.

Import notes

Currently, flash_writer.py is used as a cross-platform way to upload the firmware. This script has a dependency on wxPython. If you are on Linux, please execute

sudo apt-get install -y libgtk-3-dev python3-wxgtk4.0

so that the later pip install wxPython will succeed when building a firmware.

We will be looking to drop this huge dependency from the script.

Build Settings

In the Arduino IDE, you have the following build settings available to you:

These can be replicated in PlatformIO by adding the configuration options to the platformio.ini of the project. Note that if there multiple build_flags lines, you have to combine the options into one line.

Debug

; Release: is the default
; Debug: 
build_flags = -DPIO_FRAMEWORK_ARDUINO_ENABLE_DEBUG

Core

; Main Core: is the default
; SubCore1:
build_flags = -DPIO_FRAMEWORK_ARDUINO_CORE_SUB_CORE_1
; SubCore2:
build_flags = -DPIO_FRAMEWORK_ARDUINO_CORE_SUB_CORE_2
; SubCore3:
build_flags = -DPIO_FRAMEWORK_ARDUINO_CORE_SUB_CORE_3
; SubCore4:
build_flags = -DPIO_FRAMEWORK_ARDUINO_CORE_SUB_CORE_4
; SubCore5:
build_flags = -DPIO_FRAMEWORK_ARDUINO_CORE_SUB_CORE_5

Memory

Choose from

• 128K (131072)
• 256K (262144)
• 384K (393216)
• 512K (524288)
• 640K (655360)
• 768K (786432)
• 896K (917504)
• 1024K (1048576)
• 1152K (1179648)
• 1280K (1310720)
• 1408K (1441792)
• 1536K (1572864)

and input as follows:

; 1.5 MByte
board_upload.maximum_size = 1572864
board_upload.maximum_ram_size = 1572864

Upload speed

; 115200 is the default
; use 921600
upload_speed = 921600

Upload port

; is auto-detected by default
; use specific port
upload_port = COM7

Example

[env:spresense]
platform = sonyspresense
board = spresense
framework = arduino
build_flags = 
  -DPIO_FRAMEWORK_ARDUINO_ENABLE_DEBUG
  -DPIO_FRAMEWORK_ARDUINO_CORE_SUB_CORE_1
board_upload.maximum_size = 1572864
board_upload.maximum_ram_size = 1572864
upload_speed = 921600
upload_port = COM7
; for serial monitor
monitor_speed = 115200

For more options, see PlatformIO documentation,