[V3.2] SPIKE Prime Hub and MINDSTORMS Inventor Hub (Ideas wanted!)

[laurensvalk]

Update: Try out the beta now!

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Introduction

An early version of Pybricks for SPIKE Prime and MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor has been working for a long time. But so far it was only aimed at adventurous users who didn't mind trying out nightly builds with cumbersome installation tools.

But now, we are beginning to finalize a stable release for everyone. 🚀

SPIKE and MINDSTORMS support will come in V3.2!

Here's what we'll focus on at first. Some of this is even already done:

• Easy and quick firmware installation.
  • Using USB via our online app.
  • Installed alongside the original firmware. You can pick which one to start using the buttons.
• Download programs via BLE and save them on the hub.
• Fast program start, fast code execution, and increased memory availability.
• Charge the hub via USB.
• Support for all motors and sensors:
  • All SPIKE/MINDSTORMS motors and sensors.
  • All Powered Up motors and sensors.
  • Powered Up remote.
• Support for reading all buttons, including the center button.
• Support for the light matrix display, including animations.
• Basic support for the built-in IMU sensor.
• Complete documentation of all Pybricks modules and all MicroPython modules.

Hub-to-hub communication will be reserved for V3.3.

We want your input!

As always, a lot more is possible. But what features do you really want to see?

Let us know in a comment below. Or tell us whether we should just stick to this list for now.

Upvote!

To let us know that you're here, please 👍 this post. This really helps us prioritize user requests. This was a big hit in #186 --- let's see if we can set a new record.

[TechnicBRICKs]

This list of intended features is great!
I'm most interested in the Hub2hub communication intended for V3.3.

I'm currently focusing at other home needed activities for a few months, so hopefully when I find the time to work on my robots again this will be much closer. :)

[JorgePe]

'Download programs via BLE and save them on the hub' and 'Charge the hub via USB' are very welcome.
A stable official version for SPIKE/RI will be great, will bring more attention to the whole ecosystem.

Don't mind to wait for Hub2Hub communication... there are already enough features on current release to keep me busy :D

[TheVinhLuong102]

I second @JorgePe re: "Download programs via BLE and save them on the hub", and would like to request something more ambitious: the ability to access / manipulate the Hub's filesystem (user space only, not root/system space).

The use case I have in mind is to enable complex projects with multiple .py files with mutual imports (e.g. main.py importing some common helpers from util.py), and external data files (e.g. JSON files).

The standard to reference against is what is currently possible with EV3 through VSCode, i.e., downloading a project of multiple files to the EV3 Brick's filesystem, and maintaining multiple projects on the EV3 Brick.

Vinh

[TheVinhLuong102]

Talking of the VSCode experience, I notice this active project by Peter Staev: https://github.com/PeterStaev/lego-spikeprime-mindstorms-vscode <-- referenced here for what it's worth.

[HvMidden]

The list of suggestions is great, I hope it will come soon

[Vinz1911]

Saving programs on the hub and charging the hub via USB are also for me the essential features here. I flashed Pybricks directly to get completely rid of the original firmware (I don't need dual boot). Personally I'm not a big fan of the web IDE but I'm a big fan of pybricksdev. So it would be very nice to access the hub via REPL Mode and stop programs via the terminal.

[lobodpav]

For a better development experience and code maintenance, it would be great to allow splitting the code into multiple modules/files to avoid a single bulky python source file.

A typical scenario is a re-use of custom-made tools/libraries for multiple projects.

[jriise]

It would be cool if you could implement the hub style commands for motors (hub.port.A.motor)

[laurensvalk]

We've just released a beta version that has pretty much all of these features in one form or another.

So we can close this issue.

Feel free to keep your ideas coming --- just open a dedicated issue or discussion for each one.

[lobodpav]

We've just released a beta version that has pretty much all of these features in one form or another.

So we can close this issue.

Feel free to keep your ideas coming --- just open a dedicated issue or discussion for each one.

Sounds great! Does it also include the multiple modules/files suport?

[laurensvalk]

No, please see #591, where this is mentioned.