5 ms·

Mabez Rust on Espressif chips – Q4 update

58 points by childintime 3y ago

the__alchemist 3y ago
For anyone interested in trying rust on Espressif and/or Risc-V: Support is rapidly improving. Right now (Or at least CAO 2 weeks ago), the (semi?) official packages had dependency mismatches making getting started a pain. (Think pinning Git dependency patches), but overall, not a bad experience. The IDF is interesting, in that it works with the standard library; not the usual embedded experience, but I don't understand the mechanisms by how they made it work, or how much of the networking etc would work the same was it would does on a PC. I was unable to get probe-rs and defmt working with it; maybe will give another try, as this article points to it working. Note: Note all the the official dev boards have JTAG connected to USB. Check for that specifically.
- sergiogasquez 3y ago
  Regarding defmt and probe-rs, here are some resources: https://esp-rs.github.io/no_std-training/03_6_defmt.html https://esp-rs.github.io/no_std-training/03_6_defmt.html and https://esp-rs.github.io/book/tooling/debugging/probe-rs.html https://esp-rs.github.io/book/tooling/debugging/probe-rs.htm...
- vollbrecht 3y ago
  The rust standard library support was not that complicated to add because a) esp-idf ( with the FreeRTOS kernel) is used underneath b) esp-idf has unix like features and exposes a posix layer for stuff like networking and filesytem. If you want to look at the full initial PR on rust-lang github look for PR number 87666.
quchen 3y ago
I've looked at Rust-on-ESP a number of times in the past, but it's never been at a level of "I can make an LED blink within an hour or so". Is there a write-up for interested but not deeply involved people somewhere? How far are we from "clone this, run ./flash and the LED will blink"? How hard is it to use existing Arduino libs (e.g. MQTT, popular sensors, FastLed), or what would the ecosystem look like? I keep daydreaming about replacing my C-IoT-home mess in Rust in the meantime. :-)
- the__alchemist 3y ago
  This is what I threw together: https://github.com/David-OConnor/esp32c3_quickstart https://github.com/David-OConnor/esp32c3_quickstart In theory, there is a quickstart CLI tool that should generate a project, but it is currently broken. This is the repo I set up that "just works" for C3.
  - sergiogasquez 3y ago
    > In theory, there is a quickstart CLI tool that should generate a project, but it is currently broken. Which tool do you mean? `cargo-generate` it's working fine for both templates: - esp-idf-template(std): https://github.com/esp-rs/esp-idf-template https://github.com/esp-rs/esp-idf-template) - esp-template (no_std): https://github.com/esp-rs/esp-template https://github.com/esp-rs/esp-template
    - the__alchemist 3y ago
      Yep - that's what I'm referring to. Broken as of when I tried 2 weeks ago; can't speak to it currently.
  - ukd1 3y ago
    Ya, the tooling is improving (e.g. https://github.com/esp-rs/espup https://github.com/esp-rs/espup) - but still, the experience with Rust is always interesting; I try it every few months, then give up as it breaks, sometimes check tinygo, then realize it's still missing wifi/bt support, and go back to c. Micropython is interesting, but also the developer experience around the tooling isn't great. I was spoiled with rails imho. (if tinygo supported more than one core, and had wifi/bt support on esp32, I'd not be looking back that often)
    - steveklabnik 3y ago
      Hopefully it will continually improve given that at least one person is paid to work on it full time. It's come a long long way over the past few years.
Havoc 3y ago
That sounds promising but probably another quarters wait for good measure given my decidedly modest rust skill
- vollbrecht 3y ago
  The learning curve is quite step especially if you don't already have a good understanding of embedded systems.Funnily enough we see many rust beginners + embedded beginners directly jumping on the bandwagon and joining the Matrix channel playing around. I think there is no right or wrong answer to the question of when to start trying it out, or leave it be.
k8svet 3y ago
I was just blown away looking at code for Embassy, some sort of Rust embedded framework. Are these competing projects? Complimentary ones?
- vollbrecht 3y ago
  Embassy is a separate project, but you can use it's framework directly on either the no_std or the std(esp-idf) esp projects. For the no_std variant they provide a special version of a embassy_executor tied to the esp's and for the std case you can use whatever runtime fits your bill from tokio to smol to embassy.

58 points by childintime 3y ago

For anyone interested in trying rust on Espressif and/or Risc-V: Support is rapidly improving. Right now (Or at least CAO 2 weeks ago), the (semi?) official packages had dependency mismatches making getting started a pain. (Think pinning Git dependency patches), but overall, not a bad experience. The IDF is interesting, in that it works with the standard library; not the usual embedded experience, but I don't understand the mechanisms by how they made it work, or how much of the networking etc would work the same was it would does on a PC. I was unable to get probe-rs and defmt working with it; maybe will give another try, as this article points to it working. Note: Note all the the official dev boards have JTAG connected to USB. Check for that specifically.

sergiogasquez 3y ago
Regarding defmt and probe-rs, here are some resources: https://esp-rs.github.io/no_std-training/03_6_defmt.html https://esp-rs.github.io/no_std-training/03_6_defmt.html and https://esp-rs.github.io/book/tooling/debugging/probe-rs.html https://esp-rs.github.io/book/tooling/debugging/probe-rs.htm...
vollbrecht 3y ago
The rust standard library support was not that complicated to add because a) esp-idf ( with the FreeRTOS kernel) is used underneath b) esp-idf has unix like features and exposes a posix layer for stuff like networking and filesytem. If you want to look at the full initial PR on rust-lang github look for PR number 87666.

quchen 3y ago

I've looked at Rust-on-ESP a number of times in the past, but it's never been at a level of "I can make an LED blink within an hour or so". Is there a write-up for interested but not deeply involved people somewhere? How far are we from "clone this, run ./flash and the LED will blink"? How hard is it to use existing Arduino libs (e.g. MQTT, popular sensors, FastLed), or what would the ecosystem look like? I keep daydreaming about replacing my C-IoT-home mess in Rust in the meantime. :-)

the__alchemist 3y ago
This is what I threw together: https://github.com/David-OConnor/esp32c3_quickstart https://github.com/David-OConnor/esp32c3_quickstart In theory, there is a quickstart CLI tool that should generate a project, but it is currently broken. This is the repo I set up that "just works" for C3.
- sergiogasquez 3y ago
  > In theory, there is a quickstart CLI tool that should generate a project, but it is currently broken. Which tool do you mean? `cargo-generate` it's working fine for both templates: - esp-idf-template(std): https://github.com/esp-rs/esp-idf-template https://github.com/esp-rs/esp-idf-template) - esp-template (no_std): https://github.com/esp-rs/esp-template https://github.com/esp-rs/esp-template
  - the__alchemist 3y ago
    Yep - that's what I'm referring to. Broken as of when I tried 2 weeks ago; can't speak to it currently.
- ukd1 3y ago
  Ya, the tooling is improving (e.g. https://github.com/esp-rs/espup https://github.com/esp-rs/espup) - but still, the experience with Rust is always interesting; I try it every few months, then give up as it breaks, sometimes check tinygo, then realize it's still missing wifi/bt support, and go back to c. Micropython is interesting, but also the developer experience around the tooling isn't great. I was spoiled with rails imho. (if tinygo supported more than one core, and had wifi/bt support on esp32, I'd not be looking back that often)
  - steveklabnik 3y ago
    Hopefully it will continually improve given that at least one person is paid to work on it full time. It's come a long long way over the past few years.

Havoc 3y ago

That sounds promising but probably another quarters wait for good measure given my decidedly modest rust skill

vollbrecht 3y ago
The learning curve is quite step especially if you don't already have a good understanding of embedded systems.Funnily enough we see many rust beginners + embedded beginners directly jumping on the bandwagon and joining the Matrix channel playing around. I think there is no right or wrong answer to the question of when to start trying it out, or leave it be.

k8svet 3y ago

I was just blown away looking at code for Embassy, some sort of Rust embedded framework. Are these competing projects? Complimentary ones?

vollbrecht 3y ago
Embassy is a separate project, but you can use it's framework directly on either the no_std or the std(esp-idf) esp projects. For the no_std variant they provide a special version of a embassy_executor tied to the esp's and for the std case you can use whatever runtime fits your bill from tokio to smol to embassy.