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MakerTiles

MakerTiles is a system of modular, snap-together electronic tiles. Each tile is a small STM32-based board with a single job — a strip of LEDs, a joystick, a motor, a distance sensor, a screen, a speaker, and so on. Tiles connect on a shared bus, a USB tile bridges the bus to a PC, and a Python daemon on the PC discovers every connected tile and lets you read its inputs and drive its outputs.

This repository holds the whole stack: the hardware (KiCad board designs), the firmware (STM32 board projects + shared driver libraries), the protocols that move data over the bus, and the daemon that talks to it all from a PC.

    [ tile ]──[ tile ]──[ tile ]── … ──[ USB tile ]──USB──▶ [ PC / Python daemon ]
       └───────────────────────────────────┘
          shared SPI bus  (MicroBus + Field Protocol)

How it fits together

Two protocols stacked on top of each other carry everything:

• MicroBus — the transport. A master/multi-node protocol over a shared SPI-style link between microcontrollers, built for speed and very low RAM: fixed-size packets, a time-slotted schedule the master broadcasts in every packet, and a small per-node sliding window that gives reliable, in-order delivery with no dynamic allocation.
• Field Protocol — the application layer. Rides inside a MicroBus packet and describes each tile as a set of named, typed fields (e.g. a LED strip's colour, a dial's position). The daemon enumerates tiles, reads their field tables, and gets/sets field values without knowing the tile type in advance.

One tile acts as the master (the USB tile, which also bridges the bus to a host PC). Every other tile is a node. On the PC, the daemon opens the USB serial port, discovers the attached tiles, and exposes each one as an object you can interact with.

Repository layout

hardware/        KiCad designs for every tile (Boards/) + shared symbol/footprint
                 libraries, 3D models and BOMs (Libraries/). Old/ holds retired
                 prototype boards.

firmware/        STM32 firmware.
  Boards/          One STM32CubeIDE project per tile (Button, LedStrip, Motor,
                   Joystick, Screen, USB, …). Mostly STM32G030 nodes; the USB
                   master is an STM32F103.
  Libraries/       Shared C/C++ drivers used across boards (ledStrip, screen,
                   imu, speaker, servos, …) plus helpers (myAssert, fonts).
  Documents/       NewBoardSetup.txt — the checklist for bringing up a new tile
                   (CubeMX peripheral config + firmware wiring).

protocol/        The shared protocol code, host-buildable and testable.
  microbus/        MicroBus transport (C++). Leaf component.
  fieldprotocol/   Field Protocol (C++), depends on microbus. Also built as the
                   masterNodeSystem shared library the Python daemon loads.
  stm32/           STM32 glue binding the protocols to real SPI hardware
                   (stm32F1SpiMaster, stm32Node). Boards reach this via a
                   Core/stm32 symlink.

daemon/          Python daemon (the PC side). Opens the USB serial port, runs
                   board discovery, and drives tiles over the Field Protocol.
                   src/makertiles/ is the package; tests/ holds its test suites.

The PC daemon

The daemon is a Python package (makertiles, src-layout under daemon/). At a high level you point it at a serial port and it hands you back the discovered tiles:

import makertiles

tiles, manager = makertiles.start(port_name="/dev/ttyUSB0")

tiles.led_strip.colour = makertiles.red   # set an output field
position = tiles.dial.position             # read an input field

It can drive the C protocol two ways: over serial to real hardware in production, or — in tests — by loading the masterNodeSystem shared library directly via ctypes, so the real Python daemon exercises the real C protocol without any hardware attached. That same library is what catches drift between the C and Python sides of the wire contract.

Optional extras: Pillow (images) for the screen image-drawing helpers.

Building and testing

The C components and the Python daemon build in one CMake tree, and every test suite runs from a single command:

./build_and_test.sh

This configures, builds (MicroBus, the Field Protocol + its shared library, and the system test), then runs ctest. Python test deps (pytest, pyserial) are installed automatically if missing.

To re-run only the failures, verbosely:

ctest --test-dir build --rerun-failed --output-on-failure

Test suites

python_integration is the suite that exercises both languages together, so it is the one that catches C↔Python wire-contract drift.

The firmware board projects under firmware/Boards/ are separate STM32CubeIDE/CMake projects and are not part of the host build above — they are flashed to real tiles. See firmware/Documents/NewBoardSetup.txt for the per-board hardware and firmware bring-up checklist.

Building firmware for a tile

Each firmware/Boards/<Tile>/ directory is its own STM32 project (.ioc for CubeMX, a linker script for the target part, and CubeIDE debug launch configs). Nodes are generally STM32G030; the USB master is an STM32F103. The protocol sources are shared into each board via symlinks (Core/stm32, Core/Libraries, etc.) rather than copied — see the setup checklist for the exact links and the required SPI/timer/interrupt peripheral configuration.

License

Released under the MIT License.