Once you have CircuitPython installed and the minimum libraries installed we can get your board connected to the Internet.
To get connected, you will need to start by creating a secrets.py file.
Secrets File
We expect people to share tons of projects as they build CircuitPython WiFi widgets. What we want to avoid is people accidentally sharing their passwords or secret tokens and API keys. So, we designed all our examples to use a secrets.py file, that is in your CIRCUITPY drive, to hold secret/private/custom data. That way you can share your main project without worrying about accidentally sharing private stuff.
Your secrets.py file should look like this:
# This file is where you keep secret settings, passwords, and tokens!
# If you put them in the code you risk committing that info or sharing it
secrets = {
'ssid' : 'home_wifi_network',
'password' : 'wifi_password',
'aio_username' : 'my_adafruit_io_username',
'aio_key' : 'my_adafruit_io_key',
'timezone' : "America/New_York", # http://worldtimeapi.org/timezones
}
Copy and paste that text/code into a file called secrets.py and save it to your CIRCUITPY folder like so:
Inside is a python dictionary named secrets with a line for each entry. Each entry has an entry name (say 'ssid') and then a colon to separate it from the entry key 'home ssid' and finally a comma ,
At a minimum you'll need to adjust the ssid and password for your local WiFi setup so do that now!
As you make projects you may need more tokens and keys, just add them one line at a time. See for example other tokens such as one for accessing github or the hackaday API. Other non-secret data like your timezone can also go here, just cause its called secrets doesn't mean you can't have general customization data in there!
For the correct time zone string, look at http://worldtimeapi.org/timezones and remember that if your city is not listed, look for a city in the same time zone, for example Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Miami are all on the same time as New York.
Of course, don't share your secrets.py - keep that out of GitHub, Discord or other project-sharing sites.
Connect to WiFi
OK now you have your secrets setup - you can connect to the Internet using the Requests module.
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 introduction guide has a great page on how to install the library bundle.
- adafruit_requests
- neopixel
Before continuing make sure your board's CIRCUITPY/lib folder or root filesystem has the above files copied over.
Once that's done, load up the following example using Mu or your favorite editor:
import ipaddress
import ssl
import wifi
import socketpool
import adafruit_requests
# URLs to fetch from
TEXT_URL = "http://wifitest.adafruit.com/testwifi/index.html"
JSON_QUOTES_URL = "https://www.adafruit.com/api/quotes.php"
JSON_STARS_URL = "https://api.github.com/repos/adafruit/circuitpython"
# Get wifi details and more from a secrets.py file
try:
from secrets import secrets
except ImportError:
print("WiFi secrets are kept in secrets.py, please add them there!")
raise
print("ESP32-S2 WebClient Test")
print("My MAC addr:", [hex(i) for i in wifi.radio.mac_address])
print("Available WiFi networks:")
for network in wifi.radio.start_scanning_networks():
print("\t%s\t\tRSSI: %d\tChannel: %d" % (str(network.ssid, "utf-8"),
network.rssi, network.channel))
wifi.radio.stop_scanning_networks()
print("Connecting to %s"%secrets["ssid"])
wifi.radio.connect(secrets["ssid"], secrets["password"])
print("Connected to %s!"%secrets["ssid"])
print("My IP address is", wifi.radio.ipv4_address)
ipv4 = ipaddress.ip_address("8.8.4.4")
print("Ping google.com: %f ms" % (wifi.radio.ping(ipv4)*1000))
pool = socketpool.SocketPool(wifi.radio)
requests = adafruit_requests.Session(pool, ssl.create_default_context())
print("Fetching text from", TEXT_URL)
response = requests.get(TEXT_URL)
print("-" * 40)
print(response.text)
print("-" * 40)
print("Fetching json from", JSON_QUOTES_URL)
response = requests.get(JSON_QUOTES_URL)
print("-" * 40)
print(response.json())
print("-" * 40)
print()
print("Fetching and parsing json from", JSON_STARS_URL)
response = requests.get(JSON_STARS_URL)
print("-" * 40)
print("CircuitPython GitHub Stars", response.json()["stargazers_count"])
print("-" * 40)
print("done")
And save it to your board. Make sure the file is named code.py.
Open up your REPL, you should see something like the following:
In order, the example code...
Checks the ESP32-S2's MAC address.
print("My MAC addr:", [hex(i) for i in wifi.radio.mac_address])
Performs a scan of all access points and prints out the access point's name (SSID), signal strength (RSSI), and channel.
print("Avaliable WiFi networks:")
for network in wifi.radio.start_scanning_networks():
print("\t%s\t\tRSSI: %d\tChannel: %d" % (str(network.ssid, "utf-8"),
network.rssi, network.channel))
wifi.radio.stop_scanning_networks()
Connects to the access point you defined in the secrets.py file, prints out its local IP address, and attempts to ping google.com to check its network connectivity.
print("Connecting to %s"%secrets["ssid"])
wifi.radio.connect(secrets["ssid"], secrets["password"])
print(print("Connected to %s!"%secrets["ssid"]))
print("My IP address is", wifi.radio.ipv4_address)
ipv4 = ipaddress.ip_address("8.8.4.4")
print("Ping google.com: %f ms" % wifi.radio.ping(ipv4))
The code creates a socketpool using the wifi radio's available sockets. This is performed so we don't need to re-use sockets. Then, it initializes a a new instance of the requests interface - which makes getting data from the internet really really easy.
pool = socketpool.SocketPool(wifi.radio) requests = adafruit_requests.Session(pool, ssl.create_default_context())
To read in plain-text from a web URL, call requests.get - you may pass in either a http, or a https url for SSL connectivity.
print("Fetching text from", TEXT_URL)
response = requests.get(TEXT_URL)
print("-" * 40)
print(response.text)
print("-" * 40)
Requests can also display a JSON-formatted response from a web URL using a call to requests.get.
print("Fetching json from", JSON_QUOTES_URL)
response = requests.get(JSON_QUOTES_URL)
print("-" * 40)
print(response.json())
print("-" * 40)
Finally, you can fetch and parse a JSON URL using requests.get. This code snippet obtains the stargazers_count field from a call to the GitHub API.
print("Fetching and parsing json from", JSON_STARS_URL)
response = requests.get(JSON_STARS_URL)
print("-" * 40)
print("CircuitPython GitHub Stars", response.json()["stargazers_count"])
print("-" * 40)
OK you now have your ESP32-S2 board set up with a proper secrets.py file and can connect over the Internet. If not, check that your secrets.py file has the right ssid and password and retrace your steps until you get the Internet connectivity working!
