microrepl doesn't work on Mac OS X El Captain

[anandology]

OS: Mac OS X El Captain (10.11.5)

When I tried to run microrepl after connecting microbit, it failed to identify the micro:bit.

$ microrepl
port None
Could not find micro:bit. Is it plugged in?

Noticed that the code of microrepl is looking for pattern VID:PID=d28:204 in the serial port hwid. But it looks like the serial module is returning VID:PID=0D28:0204 instead.

Here is the status of serial ports after connecting micro:bit.

$ python
>>> from serial.tools.list_ports import comports
>>> ports = comports()
>>> for port in ports:
...     print((port[0], port[2]))
...
('/dev/cu.Bluetooth-Incoming-Port', 'n/a')
('/dev/cu.usbmodemFA142', 'USB VID:PID=0D28:0204 SER=9900023433984e45007210030000004d00000000ce5328bd LOCATION=250-1.4')
>>>

Changing the pattern from 'VID:PID=d28:204 to VID:PID=0D28:0204 in the darwin section seems to have fixed the issue.

This was using the microrepl 0.5 installed from pypi.

[anandology]

microrepl from the master branch fails with following error.

$ microrepl
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/anand/anaconda/envs/rx/bin/microrepl", line 11, in <module>
    sys.exit(main())
  File "/Users/anand/anaconda/envs/rx/bin/microrepl.py", line 87, in main
    port = find_microbit()
  File "/Users/anand/anaconda/envs/rx/bin/microrepl.py", line 40, in find_microbit
    vid, pid = int(vid, 16), int(pid, 16)
ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 16: '0204 SER=9900023433984e45007210030000004d00000000ce5328bd LOCATION=250-1.4'

[carlosperate]

Okay, so it looks like we have a 2 part issue. On one hand the VID/PID string is not in the format microrepl expects and parses the PID part as 0204 SER=9900023433984e45007210030000004d00000000ce5328bd LOCATION=250-1.4 instead of just 0204. For that PR #14 would be able to help.

On the first message however it looks like microrepl did not throw an exception, but still failed to identify the micro:bit. Looking at the code in the master branch, it looks to me like it should work in either case of the PID/VID formatted as VID:PID=d28:204 or VID:PID=0D28:0204. https://github.com/ntoll/microrepl/blob/14ad006e08630aa7790e9eff7361d36fb1ca3fd6/microrepl.py#L38-L42

Is the version in PyPi older with a different implementation of find_microbit()?

[ntoll]

Thanks for looking into this.

The following should probably do the trick with the latest PySerial:

from serial.tools.list_ports import comports as list_serial_ports

def find_microbit():
    """
    Finds the port to which the device is connected.
    """
    ports = list_serial_ports()
    for port in ports:
        if "VID:PID=0D28:0204" in port[2].upper():
            return port[0]
    return None

Apparently some work has gone into PySerial to make sure cross platform reporting of ports is more uniform. I don't have access to a Mac at the moment to be able to test this.

[anandology]

@carlosperate the version on PyPI is uploaded on 2016-03-14. So it doesn't have the code from PR #11.

[anandology]

The published version on PyPI is checking for pattern "VID:PID=d28:204" on mac and that was changed to "VID:PID=0D28:0204" in the subsequent commit. Wouldn't it be safer to check for both?

def find_microbit():
    """
    Finds the port to which the device is connected.
    """
    ports = list_serial_ports()
    for port in ports:
        hwid = port[2].upper()
        if "VID:PID=0D28:0204" in hwid or "VID:PID=D28:204" in hwid:
            return port[0]
    return None

[ntoll]

Fixed in 0.6