nimforum mirror - Nim microbit

markprocess (orginal) [2018-09-09T01:43:40+02:00] view original

Has anyone connected nim to https://lancaster-university.github.io/microbit-docs/

I'd like to add a battery pack andimplement a prototype of a ble button. Mark.

colinc (orginal) [2018-09-09T15:17:00+02:00] view original

I played around with writing nim code for tiny systems (including a micro:bit) several months ago. Here are some of the key strategies I learned along the way:

check out https://platformio.org This tool knows all about building software for a wide range of embedded systems. It will download all the cross-compile tools for you, and compile the libraries with all the right flags. I used the command-line version that they call 'Platformio Core'.

build your software in two distinct stages:
1. 'nim cpp -c' to generate source files
2. 'platformio run' to compile and link. This will happily ignore the .nim files in the source directory and pick up the generated files in the nimcache subdirectory.

the microbit and mbed libraries provide large numbers of header files, most of which are too "clever" to be digestible by 'c2nim'. I found it much easier to write my own modules with '{.importcpp.}' declarations just for the parts of each interface that I actually used.

markprocess (orginal) [2018-09-10T05:47:25+02:00] view original

Thanks for the suggestions. Did you ever try to use nim strings on these? I cannot get them to work.

colinc (orginal) [2018-09-10T09:23:17+02:00] view original

No, I never tried using nim strings or anything involving heap storage at all.

Most of the embedded systems I have worked on never had such luxuries anyway, so I instinctively declared all my variables statically and had no such problems...

Here are the nim flags I used, just in case they are relevant (but I don't claim to understand them all):

--os:standalone

--cpu:arm

--gc:stack

--define:StandaloneHeapSize=32

--checks:off

--define:release

--noCppExceptions

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