pi-protocol

Minimalist message protocol in C to exchange messages between MCU's. Includes a python generation utility for the header and source files.

Description

The protocol

A frame consists of:

| STX | MSG_ID | PAYLOAD_BYTE_1 | PAYLOAD_BYTE_2 | ... | PAYLOAD_BYTE_N | CHECKSUM |

STX bytes in MSG_ID and PAYLOAD are escaped by the sequence ESC STX_ESC and ESC bytes are escaped with ESC ESC_ESC. This is simple and very robust to parse, but causes worst case overhead of 100%, if every payload byte is either STX or ESC.

Working principle of the generation of the protocol

The .yaml files inside ./msgs/ define message fields and the filename defines the message name. The filename (and, as a result, the message name) should be formatted as all-caps-snake-case, like ALL_CAPS_SNAKE_CASE.yaml.
A configuration .yaml file in the root of this repo defines which messages should be included and if they are to be received, sent or both (RX, TX or RXTX). Additionally, the global_mode option can be set to RX or TX instead of RXTX if it is known that all messages are RX or TX-only. In that case, the mode flags of each message have no effect.
Python generates c-headers form jinja2-templates and define the message serialization ("packing") and parsing for receiving (packing for serial sending, parsing for serial reading).
The resulting headers depend only on some standard libraries: string.h, stdint.h and stdbool.h. For testing and debugging output also stdio.h, of course.

Generation and Usage

Pre-requesites

Tested on Ubuntu 22.04. Install make, python3, pip and then the required python modules for generation

sudo apt install make python3 python3-pip
pip install -r python/requirements.txt

Generation of C files

Edit the yaml files to your liking, they should be self-explanatory. You can copy the config.yaml and give it a different name. Then generate the headers:

make clean && make CONFIG=config.yaml

Usage in your project

Look at tester.c. Especially note how the dummyWriter() is passed to piSerialWrite(). For TX, this is the function that needs to be modified/replaced to actually get the bytes on the transmission line, byte-for-byte.

Tests

You need gcc installed, then do

make clean && make CONFIG=config.yaml tester && ./tester

History

2024-08-27 -- Version 2.0.0 -- Initial release

Authors

Till Blaha (@tblaha, Delft University of Technology, t.m.blaha - @ - tudelft.nl)

Structure

.
├── msgs/          # Message definitions
├── python/        # generation utility
├── src/           # static source files (only protocol implementation)
├── templates/     # source files to be generated
├── tests/
├── config.yaml    # configurations of which messages should be generated
├── LICENSE
├── Makefile
├── README.md

License

The contents of this repository are licensed under a GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0, with the exception of the contents of src/. The contents of src/, as well as the generated output files are licensed under an MIT License. See the LICENSE file.

Technische Universiteit Delft hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program “Indiflight Support” (one line description of the content or function) written by the Author(s).

Henri Werij, Dean of the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering

tudelft/pi-protocol