Select hub to connect in VS Code

[RitchieP]

Hi, I'm currently using PyBricks with VS Code.

Currently, I'm facing an issue where, if I have multiple SPIKE Prime Hub on at the same time, VS Code doesn't seem to allow us to choose which brick to connect to. Is there any solution to this?

[dlech]

You can give each hub a unique name when you flash the firmware and then specify the name when using the pybricksdev command.

[RitchieP]

Ah! I just realized I missed it at the first section of the Using Pybricks with Visual Studio Code. Another side question, are there plans to have a feature so that Bluetooth maintains its connection just like in PyBricks Code?

[dlech]

No immediate plans, but this is an often requested feature.

[techcatgato]

Hi, unrelated but how do you use PyBricks Spike with vsc?

[laurensvalk]

See https://pybricks.com/project/pybricks-other-editors/

[FLL-Team-24277]

We have several spike hubs for our team, and we use VS code to program/execute. We have a VS Code task to automate the running of the code.

.vscode\tasks.json

{
    "version": "2.0.0",
    "tasks": [
        {
            "label": "Run on robot",
            "type": "shell",
            "command": "${workspaceFolder}/.venv/Scripts/pybricksdev.exe",
            "args": [
                "run",
                "ble",
                "--name",
                "${env:robotName}",
                "${file}"
            ],
            "problemMatcher": {
                "owner": "python",
                "fileLocation": [
                    "absolute"
                ],
                "pattern": {
                    "regexp": "^(.*)File(.*)(C:(.*)\\.py)(.*)(line(\\s*))([0-9]+),",
                    "file": 3,
                    "line": 8
                }
            },
            "presentation": {
                "echo": true,
                "reveal": "always",
                "focus": false,
                "panel": "shared",
                "showReuseMessage": false,
                "clear": false,
                "revealProblems": "onProblem"
            }
        },
        {
            "label": "git pull on startup",
            "type": "shell",
            "command": "git pull",
            "windows": {
                "command": "git pull"
            },
            "presentation": {
                "reveal": "always",
                "panel": "new"
            },
            "runOptions": {
                "runOn": "folderOpen"
            },
            "problemMatcher": []
        },
        {
            "label": "Run on any robot",
            "type": "shell",
            "command": "${workspaceFolder}/.venv/Scripts/pybricksdev.exe",
            "args": [
                "run",
                "ble",
                "--name",
                "${input:robotName}",
                "${file}"
            ],
            "problemMatcher": {
                "owner": "python",
                "fileLocation": [
                    "absolute"
                ],
                "pattern": {
                    "regexp": "^(.*)File(.*)(C:(.*)\\.py)(.*)(line(\\s*))([0-9]+),",
                    "file": 3,
                    "line": 8
                }
            },
            "presentation": {
                "echo": true,
                "reveal": "always",
                "focus": false,
                "panel": "shared",
                "showReuseMessage": false,
                "clear": false,
                "revealProblems": "onProblem"
            }
        }
    ],
    "inputs": [
        {
            "type": "pickString",
            "id": "robotName",
            "description": "Which Robot?",
            "options": [
                "BOB",
                "CURIOSITY",
                "GABE",
                "LEROYYY",
                "MITZVAH",
                "NOTDECLAN",
                "OAKS",
                "PATRIOT",
                "SUPERNOVA",
                "TIMOTHY"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

First set a user environment variable named "robotName" and set the value to whatever your hub name is. That way there can be a default robot per laptop.

Then you can use a keyboard shortcut to run on the default robot with ctrl-shift-L, or you can use ctrl-alt-L to have the option to launch on any of the team robots. Here are the keybindings for that

keybindings.json

[
    {
        "key" : "ctrl+shift+l",
        "command" : "workbench.action.tasks.runTask",
        "args": "Run on robot"
    },
    {
        "key" : "ctrl+alt+l",
        "command" : "workbench.action.tasks.runTask",
        "args": "Run on any robot"
    }
]

You can see in the tasks.json that we also have a git pull run every time we open our code for editing. You can choose to use that too or not.

We have been using pybricks with vs code for a couple of years now, so let us know if you have any questions, or just ask here!

https://github.com/FLL-Team-24277/FLL-Fall-2024-Submerged

[RitchieP]

Wow! Thanks for such detailed info! I'll have a look into it and come back to you if I have any further questions.