It's easy to use the Adafruit AirLift breakout with CircuitPython and the Adafruit CircuitPython ESP32SPI module. This module allows you to easily add WiFi to your project.
First, wire up your AirLift as follows. The following example shows it wired to a Feather M4 using SPI:
- Board VIN to Feather USB
- Board GND to Feather GND
- Board SCK to Feather SCK
- Board MISO to Feather MI
- Board MOSI to Feather MO
- Board CS to Feather D10
- Board BUSY to Feather D9
- Board !RST to Feather D6
You must use USB or VBAT for powering the AirLift Breakout!
CircuitPython Installation of ESP32SPI Library
You'll need to install the Adafruit CircuitPython ESP32SPI library on your CircuitPython board.
First make sure you are running the latest version of Adafruit CircuitPython for your board.
Next you'll need to install the necessary libraries to use the hardware--carefully follow the steps to find and install these libraries from Adafruit's CircuitPython library bundle. Our CircuitPython starter guide has a great page on how to install the library bundle.
You can manually install the necessary libraries from the bundle:
- adafruit_esp32spi
- adafruit_requests.mpy
- adafruit_bus_device
Before continuing make sure your board's lib folder or root filesystem has the adafruit_esp32spi, adafruit_requests.mpy, and adafruit_bus_device files and folders copied over.
Next make sure you are set up to connect to the serial console
import board
import busio
from digitalio import DigitalInOut
from adafruit_esp32spi import adafruit_esp32spi
import adafruit_requests as requests
print("ESP32 SPI hardware test")
esp32_cs = DigitalInOut(board.D10)
esp32_ready = DigitalInOut(board.D9)
esp32_reset = DigitalInOut(board.D7)
spi = busio.SPI(board.SCK, board.MOSI, board.MISO)
esp = adafruit_esp32spi.ESP_SPIcontrol(spi, esp32_cs, esp32_ready, esp32_reset)
if esp.status == adafruit_esp32spi.WL_IDLE_STATUS:
print("ESP32 found and in idle mode")
print("Firmware vers.", esp.firmware_version)
print("MAC addr:", [hex(i) for i in esp.MAC_address])
for ap in esp.scan_networks():
print("\t%s\t\tRSSI: %d" % (str(ap['ssid'], 'utf-8'), ap['rssi']))
print("Done!")
Connect to the serial console to see the output. It should look something like the following:
Make sure you see the same output! If you don't, check your wiring. Note that we've changed the pinout in the code example above to reflect the CircuitPython Microcontroller Pinout at the top of this page.
Once you've succeeded, continue onto the next page!
