REV Hub Interface (Community Edition)

The REV Hub Interface is a piece of software allowing for a direct connection from a REV Expansion Hub and its peripherals to a PC.

This interface provides a method for teams to prototype with motors, servos, and sensors in a way that is faster and easier than setting up an entire robot control system. It is also a valuable troubleshooting tool that can help isolate the cause of an issue and determine if it is electrical or software related. The REV Hub Firmware can also be updated and recovered through this interface in addition to the Robot Controller Application.

This is a community continuation of the software, updating to newer underlying technologies (e.g. porting from Python 2 to Python 3), adding features, and porting to more platforms (Linux and macOS, in addition to Windows).

Installing the software

Start by downloading the latest version of the software from the Releases page. An .exe is provided for Windows systems, a Flatpak for Linux systems (soon to be published on Flathub), and a .DMG for macOS. Alternately, you can download it from PyPi:

1. Install Python 3
2. Run pip install REVHubInterface to install
3. Finally, run python3 -m REVHubInterface to run the app (it should also be runnable as revhubinterface)

To avoid needing to run with root privileges on Ubuntu based platforms (and possibly other distributions) you need to add your user to the dialout group:

1. Run sudo usermod `whoami` -a -G dialout
2. Reboot

Firmware updates may require installing a driver.

Warning

Firmware update functionality has been ommited from the initial release.

Driver installation

• Windows: The newest versions of Windows should automatically install the required USB drivers. Alternatively, you can download the latest drivers from the FTDI VCP website.
• Linux: The latest libftdi is provided in the Flatpak. If installing via PyPI instead, you will need to install libftdi yourself. On Ubuntu and derivitaves, this can be installed with sudo apt install libftdi1. The package name may be similar on other distributions.
• macOS: (TODO: figure out; brew install libftdi doesn't seem to make the error go away. UPDATE: lsgunth/pyft232#22 is merged but not yet published, in the mean time we should manually apply the change in our releases that have the library bundled. Also, should we bundle libftdi1.dylib and its dependencies, or request users install it via Homebrew themselves?

Connecting and Controlling an Expansion Hub

1. Connect your Expansion Hub to the computer with a USB A to USB Mini-B cable.
2. Run the REV Hub Interface Software.
3. Press Connect. The software will scan and connect to the Expansion Hub. The various peripheral tabs will populate with controls once connected.

Running the development version

Early binaries are availiable from the Actions tab, or from the pre-releases section of https://pypi.org/project/REVHubInterface/#history.

If you want to compile yourself rather than using a pre-packaged version, you will need to install a few additional dependencies:

• Python 3
• Tkinter
  • Windows: This is included in the Python 3 installer, just make sure sure it is selected to be installed at install time.
  • Linux: On Ubuntu and derivatives, this is instaled with sudo apt install python3-tk. The package name will likely be similar on other distributions.
  • macOS: If using Homebrew, it can be install via brew install python-tk.
• On Linux, you will need to install libftdi. On Ubuntu and derivitaves, this can be installed with sudo apt install libftdi1. The package name may be similar on other distributions.
• The remaining Python dependencies (currently pyft232 and pyserial, subject to future changes) can be installed via pip3 install -r requirements.txt
• Finally, run python3 REVHubInterface while in the base folder of the repo.
• Alternately, you can install onto your system from source using pip install . from the base folder of the repo, then using python3 -m REVHubInterface from anywhere.

Compiling and publishing binaries

Directions for developers

PyPi

PyPi builds should be automated by simply updating the trigger-actions branch, however, if you want to do it manually:

1. Install build (pip install build) and twine (pip install twine)
2. Create a Github release with a tag with the proper version number (if you want a dev release just skip this step; see https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/specifications/version-specifiers/ for proper version numbering)
3. Run python3 -m build
4. Run twine upload dist/*

You may want to setup an API key for easier login, see https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/specifications/pypirc/#using-a-pypi-token

Pyinstaller

Pyinstaller builds should be automated by pushing to the trigger-actions branch and binaries should be available in the actions tab. However, if you'd prefer to build from source:

1. Install PyInstaller (pip install pyinstaller)
2. Run pyinstaller REVHubInterface.spec
3. The binary should be available in the dist folder

Flatpak

Install Flatpak and flatpak-builder
TODO: finish this with Flathub directions