rshell hangs copying to pyboard

[DougK]

I'm developing some library files for a robot that uses an ESP32 for control. Because the hardware is new and I'm pretty new to python I frequently need to download modified files from my PC to the ESP32 (an MH-ET Live board). I'm working on a Windows 10 machine and my ESP32 typically connects to COM10, although I've experienced this issue with several different boards and different com ports.

When I run

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rshell -p com10 

it always connects to the ESP32. But, when I do a

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cp file.py /pyboard/lib/file.py

it hangs about half the time. I've tried resetting the ESP, pulling the USB cable and re-inserting it, killing the cmd window and restarting it, etc., but have not found anything that works consistently. I've run an os.listdir from repl and the output is what I expected.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this? It takes a lot of extra time and typing every time a copy fails.

[davef]

After:

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rshell -p com10 

what do you get if you then do;

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ls

After I invoke rshell (in Linux) I always change to:

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/pyboard/

before I do any copying or editing.

[DougK]

If I do

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ls 

after starting rshell I get a list of the files on my computer that are in the directory I started rshell from. This is multiple directories deep (i.e., somewhat long path). It sounds like you have a top level directory on your computer named /pyboard/ that you work from.

[davef]

OK, the <ls> seems to work.

/pyboard/ is the top directory on the ESP32 using the standard Micropython image.

I don't have any experience with rshell on Windows ... hope someone else can help.

[pythoncoder]

I have no experience of Windows but behaviour at the rshell prompt should be the same. An ESP32 shows up as /pyboard. Hence, at the rshell prompt

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> ls /pyboard

should list the contents of flash.

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> ls

will show you your current directory. So

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> cp myfile.py /pyboard/

will copy the file from your current PC directory to the ESP32 flash.

To connect to ESP32 I use this (which will need adapting for Windows):

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rshell -p /dev/ttyUSB0 --buffer-size=30 -a

[DougK]

davef and Peter,

Thanks for the replies! The

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ls /pyboard

does what you'd expect - lists the contents of the flash on my ESP. I added the -a option when starting rshell, but it still hangs when copying. I'm copying .py files, which should be ascii, so I wouldn't have expected the -a to do much. My buffer size already defaulted to 32, but I tried 30 just to be sure. Copies still hang about half the time. cd and ls seem to work all the time, so I think the issue is some combination of Windows and cp, although I don't have a theory on what it could be.

If I do

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cd /pyboard
ls

I see the contents of flash on my ESP32. How do I get back to my computer?

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cd - 

tries to concatenate the path on my computer to /pyboard. I looked at the rshell readme on GitHub but didn't see a way to specify the computer in SOURCE or DEST. I thought maybe I could pull files down to the ESP rather than push from my computer in case that eliminated the problem, but I couldn't see how to do that.

Doug

[davef]

How do I get back to my computer?

I can only tell you how for Linux

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cd /home/davef

I would be a bit surprised if forward slashes would take you to a directory on a Windows box.

[pythoncoder]

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> cd ~

works under Linux to take me back to the PC.

In my use of rshell I rarely use cd: I generally stay in the location where I started, copying files from there to the device.

[dhylands]

Just a note about forward slashes. rshell only supports forward slashes and doesn't support backslashes at all.

Internally windows has always supported forward slashes (even dating back to Windows 3.0). It has only been command.com and cmd.exe which don't support forward slashes. Forward slashes work fine everywhere else in Windows.

[DougK]

Thanks to all for the help. I'm definitely smarter in my use of rshell. I did figure out how to get back to my computer, but the path on my computer is much longer than on the esp, so definitely easier to copy from the computer to the esp (much less typing). I had been including the drive identifier (e.g., d:) in the path, but that doesn't work).

But, I still have the issue where it hangs about half of the time, but only when copying files. Everything else seems to work as expected.

Doug