mpremote1

Usage

Overview

The mpremote command line tool provides an integrated set of utilities to remotely interact with and automate a MicroPython device over a serial connection.

The simplest way to use this tool is just by invoking it without any arguments:

mpremote

This command automatically detects and connects to the first available serial device and provides an interactive REPL. Serial ports are opened in exclusive mode, so running a second (or third, etc) instance of mpremote will connect to subsequent serial devices, if any are available.

Options

--help

Show a help message and exit.

--version

Show the program version and exit.

Commands

For REPL access, running mpremote without any arguments is usually all that is needed. mpremote also supports a set of commands given at the command line which will perform various actions on remote MicroPython devices.

For commands that support multiple arguments (e.g. a list of files), the argument list can be terminated with +. The full list of supported commands are:

connect [device]

Connect to a specified device via a device-name shortcut. device may be one of:

auto

connect to the first available device

list

list the available devices

id:serial

connect to the device with USB serial number serial (the second entry in the output from the connect list command)

port:path

connect to the device with the given path

If the device is not specified, auto is assumed.

disconnect

Disconnects the current device. After a disconnect, auto soft-reset is enabled (see AUTO-CONNECTION AND SOFT-RESET below).

resume

Resume a previous mpremote session. This disables auto soft-reset (see AUTO-CONNECTION AND SOFT-RESET below).

soft-reset

Perform a soft-reset of the device. This will clear out the Python heap and restart the interpreter. It also disables auto soft-reset (see AUTO-CONNECTION AND SOFT-RESET below).

repl [options]

Enter the REPL on the connected device. The available options are:

--capture file

to capture output of the REPL session to the given file

--inject-code string

to specify characters to inject at the REPL when Ctrl-J is pressed

--inject-file file

to specify a file to inject at the REPL when Ctrl-K is pressed

eval string

Evaluate ahd print the result of a Python expression.

exec string

Execute the given Python code.

run file

Run a script from the local filesystem.

fs subcommand

Execute filesystem commands on the device. subcommand may be:

cat files...

to show the contents of a file or files on the device

ls
ls dirs...

to list the current, or specified directories

cp [-r] src... dest

to copy files; use ":" as a prefix to specify a file on the device

rm src...

to remove files on the device

mkdir dirs...

to create directories on the device

rmdir dirs...

to remove directories on the device

touch files...

to create empty files (if they don't already exist)

edit files...

Edit a file (or files) on the device. The edit command will copy each file from the device to a local temporary directory and then launch your editor (defined by the environment variable $EDITOR). If the editor exits successfully, the updated file will be copied back to the device.

mip install [options] packages...

Install packages from micropython-lib (or GitHub) using the mip tool. The available options are:

--target path

Install under path instead of the default location (the first entry in sys.path ending in /lib). Please note that must exist in sys.path for you to be able to subsequently import the package.

--no-mpy

Install the source version .py files rather than .mpy).

--index URL

Use the specified URL instead of the default package index at https://micropython.org/pi.

mount [options] local-dir

Mount a local directory on the remote device (under the path /remote). During usage, Ctrl-D will soft-reboot and normally reconnect the mount automatically. If the unit has a main.py running at startup however, the remount cannot occur. In this case a raw mode soft reboot can be used: Ctrl-A Ctrl-D to reboot, then Ctrl-B to get back to normal repl at which point the mount will be ready.

The available options are:

-l, --unsafe-links

By default an error will be raised if the device accesses a file or directory which is outside (up one or more directory levels) the local directory that is mounted. This option disables this check for symbolic links, allowing the device to follow symbolic links outside of the local directory.

umount

Unmount the local directory from the remote device.

Auto-connection and soft-reset

Connection and disconnection will be done automatically at the start and end of the execution of the tool, if such commands are not explicitly given. Automatic connection will search for the first available serial device. If no action is specified then the REPL will be entered.

Once connected to a device, mpremote will automatically soft-reset the device if needed. This clears the Python heap and restarts the interpreter, making sure that subsequent Python code executes in a fresh environment. Auto soft-reset is performed the first time one of the following commands are executed: mount, eval, exec, run, fs. After doing a soft-reset for the first time, it will not be done again automatically, until a disconnect command is issued.

Auto soft-reset behaviour can be controlled by the resume command. And the soft-reset command can be used to perform an explicit soft reset.

Shortcuts

Shortcuts can be defined using the macro system. Built-in shortcuts are:

Any user configuration, including user-defined shortcuts, can be placed in the file ~/.config/mpremote/config.py. For example:

commands = {
    "c33": "connect id:334D335C3138",
    "bl": "bootloader",
    "double x=4": "eval x*2",  # x is an argument, with default 4
    "wl_scan": ["exec", """
import network
wl = network.WLAN()
wl.active(1)
for ap in wl.scan():
    print(ap)
""",],
    "test": ["mount", ".", "exec", "import test"],
}

Examples

mpremote

Launch a repl on the automatically detected device.

mpremote a1

Launch a repl on the device connected to port /dev/ttyACM1 (using the built-in a1 shortcut).

mpremote connect /dev/ttyUSB0 repl

Launch a repl on the device connect to port /dev/ttyUSB0.

mpremote ls

List files on the automatically detected device.

mpremote a1 ls

List files on the device connected to port /dev/ttyACM1 (using the built-in a1 shortcut).

mpremote exec import micropython; micropython.mem_info()

Execute some Python code on the remote board to obtain various memory statistics.

mpremote eval 1/2 eval 3/4

Execute (and show the output of) two simple Python statements on the remote board. Note that no + was required because eval accepts a single string argument.

mpremote mount .

Mount the local directory under /remote on the automatically detected device.

mpremote mount . exec "import localscript"

Mount the local directory under /remote on the MicroPython board, then import the "localscript" module

mpremote cat boot.py

Show the contents of boot.py on the MicroPython board.

mpremote cp :main.py .

Copy the main.py file from the (remote) MicroPython board to the current (local) directory.

mpremote cp main.py :

Copy the main.py from the current (local) directory to the (remote) MicroPython board.

mpremote cp :a.py :b.py

On the MicroPython board, copy a.py to b.py.

mpremote cp -r dir/ :

Recursively copy the local directory dir/ to the root directory of the (remote) MicroPython board.

mpremote cp a.py b.py : + repl

Copy the local files a.py and b.py to the root directory of the (remote) MicroPython board, then launch a repl. Note that the + terminator is required here as the cp command takes an arbitrary number of parameters.

mpremote mip install aioble

Install the asyncio-based wrapper for the Bluetooth API.

mpremote mip install github:org/repo@branch

Install the branch of the MicroPython package located under org/repo on GitHub.

mpremote mip install --target /flash/third-party functools

Install the functools package under the /flash/third-party directory on the MicroPython board.