Question about installation procedure #26
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SummaryOn macOS, ensure Xcode and the command line tools are consistent with the macOS release. In my case:
I discovered this project at the Node-RED Con 2022. Congratulations for porting Node-RED to MCUs and bringing low-code/no-code to MCUs! However, I am facing some issues with the installation.
To make use even easier, is there a Docker container ready to test? Thank you! |
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Replies: 13 comments 18 replies
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Hi! |
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Here is the continuation of the out-of-the-box experience... I have applied the official fix to SyntaxError: Unexpected token '??=' on manifest.js:286 #2 , cleaner than commenting out the incriminating lines. Node-RED shows the MCU pane. The minimal example consists of a slider as input and a text as output. Code``` [ { "id": "1fe04122a999db89", "type": "ui_switch", "z": "8e87e4f4f08e5f85", "name": "", "label": "switch", "tooltip": "", "group": "154df00148cb07e8", "order": 0, "width": 0, "height": 0, "passthru": true, "decouple": "false", "topic": "topic", "topicType": "msg", "style": "", "onvalue": "true", "onvalueType": "bool", "onicon": "", "oncolor": "", "offvalue": "false", "offvalueType": "bool", "officon": "", "offcolor": "", "animate": false, "className": "", "_mcu": { "mcu": true }, "x": 410, "y": 260, "wires": [ [ "e1a767782dd7a055" ] ] }, { "id": "e1a767782dd7a055", "type": "ui_text", "z": "8e87e4f4f08e5f85", "group": "154df00148cb07e8", "order": 1, "width": 0, "height": 0, "name": "", "label": "text", "format": "{{msg.payload}}", "layout": "row-spread", "className": "", "_mcu": { "mcu": true }, "x": 610, "y": 260, "wires": [] }, { "id": "154df00148cb07e8", "type": "ui_group", "name": "Default", "tab": "7593fcf8177670fc", "order": 1, "disp": true, "width": "6", "collapse": false, "className": "", "_mcu": { "mcu": false } }, { "id": "7593fcf8177670fc", "type": "ui_tab", "name": "Home", "icon": "dashboard", "disabled": false, "hidden": false, "_mcu": { "mcu": false } } ] ```I have selected Simulation > Moddable Two and pressed Build. The console monitor displays...
...but no more. Are there other steps I am missing? |
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Well ... you hit three issues with one flow! 😁
node-red-mcu/manifest_runtime.json Lines 43 to 50 in 5d8bde9
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I tested the UI nodes as they were shown at the Node-RED Con 2022. Good to know node-red-mcu only works on macOS. |
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Sorry. I guess my comment was not crisp enough: |
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Thank you for the clarification. I will try on Linux with a Raspberry Pi Pico W as target. |
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Trying now against the Raspberry Pi Pico W! The local machine runs on Debian + Gnome. I have the Pico SDK as explained at Getting Started with Raspberry Pi Pico | Linux setup. Selecting one and clicking on Build return this error
I have noticed all the Pico targets feature a screen. Is there an option without a screen? Is there an example I could replicate? The Node-RED minimal project used here in this example implements a basic MQTT program: received numbers are multiplied by two. [
{
"id": "99367bcd13a45c26",
"type": "mqtt in",
"z": "8e87e4f4f08e5f85",
"name": "",
"topic": "TEST/IN",
"qos": "2",
"datatype": "auto-detect",
"broker": "68a7573a3f55c15e",
"nl": false,
"rap": true,
"rh": 0,
"inputs": 0,
"_mcu": {
"mcu": false
},
"x": 200,
"y": 120,
"wires": [
[
"13f25af16955ad16"
]
]
},
{
"id": "a9895ff8516deae2",
"type": "mqtt out",
"z": "8e87e4f4f08e5f85",
"name": "",
"topic": "TEST/OUT",
"qos": "",
"retain": "",
"respTopic": "",
"contentType": "",
"userProps": "",
"correl": "",
"expiry": "",
"broker": "68a7573a3f55c15e",
"_mcu": {
"mcu": false
},
"x": 690,
"y": 380,
"wires": []
},
{
"id": "13f25af16955ad16",
"type": "change",
"z": "8e87e4f4f08e5f85",
"name": "",
"rules": [
{
"t": "set",
"p": "payload",
"pt": "msg",
"to": "$number(payload) * 2",
"tot": "jsonata"
}
],
"action": "",
"property": "",
"from": "",
"to": "",
"reg": false,
"_mcu": {
"mcu": false
},
"x": 460,
"y": 260,
"wires": [
[
"a9895ff8516deae2"
]
]
},
{
"id": "68a7573a3f55c15e",
"type": "mqtt-broker",
"name": "",
"broker": "192.168.0.147",
"port": "1883",
"clientid": "",
"autoConnect": true,
"usetls": false,
"protocolVersion": "4",
"keepalive": "60",
"cleansession": true,
"birthTopic": "",
"birthQos": "0",
"birthPayload": "",
"birthMsg": {},
"closeTopic": "",
"closeQos": "0",
"closePayload": "",
"closeMsg": {},
"willTopic": "",
"willQos": "0",
"willPayload": "",
"willMsg": {},
"userProps": "",
"sessionExpiry": "",
"_mcu": {
"mcu": false
}
}
] |
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Not all the Pico targets have a screen. You can build for a bare Pico board with a platform target of |
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I've just implemented the recently added additional pico platform identifiers (e.g. |
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Thank you for your help. Now, with board However, 8 or so
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Maybe sharing a working container would make exploring Moddable and node-red-mcu easier. |
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I tried again to install the whole project, this time on a Mac and targeting a Raspberry Pi Pico. Alas, the installation failed as some tools still target the Intel processors and not the Apple ARM-based processor. Could you please share a container so I could explore Moddable and node-red-mcu? Thank you! |
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I already had a fix prepared for this issue. It is now commited. |
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@ralphwetzel - Interesting. If that works for @rei-vilo, doesn't that suggest that the environment variable $PICO_GCC_ROOT was not set-up correct in Step 4 of the macOS Pico set-up instructions? If that's the case, maybe we need to make the notice about ARM versus x86 installs more prominent / clear FWIW – It is clever to work around problems like this in the MCU plug-in. But, ultimately it may be problematic. If the user has installed these items to a non-standard location, the MCU plug-in will override those with the standard location. That will be quite difficult to debug. I like the idea of the MCU plug-in helping users to avoid problems, but maybe there there's another approach. |
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The plugin tries to be as supportive as possible. Environment variables are verified in two steps:
Thus the user definition has priority & will not be overwritten. Only if there's a gap of definition, the plugin tries to help... |
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The issue could be, that those definitions do not persist the end of a terminal session. Both instructions are correct & the ESP32 adds another aspect - that might be helpful for Pico (and others) as well. |
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Thank you for the effort. I can be frustrating when install doesn't work. Let's try to sort it out.
Would you share the install command you used and the error message it reported? FWIW – I regularly build for Raspberry Pi Pico on macOS using an M2 Mac and I know others using an M1 Mac. When I install, I follow the Pico install instructions in the Moddable SDK.
We don't usually provide containers. We could do that, but this install should work so we'd like to sort that out. Thank you for your patience! @mkellner do you have any suggestions here? |
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Thank you for your answers and links. Short versionIn a typical Apple way, some tools are no longer compatible with the updated releases of macOS, Xcode and Command Line Tools. Worse, compatible tools are not available except as release candidates. After installing Xcode 14, I had to install Xcode 14.1 RC2 and the corresponding CLT 14.1 RC2 in order to ensure compatibility with macOS 13. Long versionI know this is an early version of Node-RED for MCUs. However, I would like to stress that the whole installation process required me downloading ~24 GB and going through arcane commands, hardly consistent with a product which is supposed to be low code/no code. This is my third tentative to install Moddable and Node-RED for MCUs. Despite my interest on such a solution (see Could Node-RED generate code for MCUs? on the Node-RED forum). I have already spent too much time for installation only and I am afraid I have no more time for actually testing Moddable and Node-RED for MCUs. Maybe a container could squeeze installation time as much as possible and let the user focus instead on the benefits of Moddable and Node-RED for MCUs. As a side note, I am no longer using Apple solutions for development. Two reasons: always changing hardware and software; absence of LTS policy. I learnt it the hard way with embedXcode, a plug-in for embedded development on Xcode I developed. I am now using Linux as a tool for professional development while I am keeping Mac as a toy. |
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Thank you for reporting your issues and for understanding that Node-RED MCU Edition is still in its early stages. We are sorry your experience has been frustrating. We agree it should be better. We are always open to suggestions for how to improve. We understand that Apple tools can be challenging. To help with that and to generally eliminate the "arcane commands" from installation, Moddable is supporting a open source community-initiative called xs-dev that dramatically simplifies set-up of the Moddable SDK and support for MCUs. If you can make some time and remain interested, we encourage you to contribute your expertise to help. Finally, it may now be possible to build and run Node-RED MCU Edition on Linux. When development began, it wasn't. We'll take a look at getting that enabled so you'll be able to develop on your preferred platform. |
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So now I have installed the according to the procedure. Two problems:
...and
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Thank you for reporting the results of your efforts. |
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Done. |
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Thanks! Now, that part installs and works correctly. Next step is to play with a minimal project a Pico. Any example to recommend? |
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Despite it looks like nothing, there's happening a lot:
In essence, that's the whole system in action. [
{
"id": "d54ee83032ee8422",
"type": "tab",
"label": "Flow 10",
"disabled": false,
"info": "",
"env": [],
"_mcu": {
"mcu": true
}
},
{
"id": "4311906cded2e5d5",
"type": "inject",
"z": "d54ee83032ee8422",
"name": "",
"props": [
{
"p": "payload"
}
],
"repeat": "",
"crontab": "",
"once": false,
"onceDelay": "3",
"topic": "",
"payload": "",
"payloadType": "date",
"_mcu": {
"mcu": true
},
"x": 360,
"y": 360,
"wires": [
[
"359cc37ba40d4b50"
]
]
},
{
"id": "359cc37ba40d4b50",
"type": "debug",
"z": "d54ee83032ee8422",
"name": "Debug from MCU",
"active": true,
"tosidebar": true,
"console": false,
"tostatus": true,
"complete": "payload",
"targetType": "msg",
"statusVal": "payload",
"statusType": "auto",
"_mcu": {
"mcu": true
},
"x": 550,
"y": 360,
"wires": []
}
] |
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Thank you @phoddie and @ralphwetzel for your answers. After running xs-dev to make sure my prior installation was fine, I managed to play with the suggested example and get the expected result.
Some comments: Flows listThe MCU panes shows a long list of flows, while the current project has only one.
How to clear the list? JSONataIn the flow below, the payload of the MQTT message
The compiler complains against using the JSONata expression
Is JSONata supported? WiFi credentials for Raspberry Pi PicoUsing a standard function solves the issue mentioned before. However, how to pass the WiFi credentials onto the Raspberry Pi Pico W? Edit: Question about GPIO moved to #35. To be continued... |
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Good to know! Sending ...returns
As Node-RED is all about IoT, I would suggest a more user-friendly way of defining the WiFi credentials, for example through a configuration node. Now waiting for an answer about the GPIO to blink the built-in Raspberry Pi Pico W LED... |
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Feel free to contribute that! 😁 |
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I am afraid I am just a Node-RED user! |
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I'm pretty sure, all the other flows exist as well but are in status hidden. If you open the Down-Arrow menu in the top line, right hand edge of the flow tabs & select the first entry, you'll get a list of those...
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Just kidding! 😉
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Hi!
Thank you for testing node-red-mcu & the plugin.
You're already ready to go: The plugin installs node-red-mcu as well...
Looking forward to your feedback!
R.