Developing with Dia locally

Python
1

Good evening, all. I’m attempting to get up to speed with Dia by developing a device driver for a sensor I’ve built (it just needs to translate data sent via the UART into channels). Despite being able to run dia.py locally, however, there doesn’t appear to be any hardware support. When I fire up a config that uses the XBee device manager, I get:

Starting Device Driver Manager…

Exception during dynamic class load:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “./src/devices/device_driver_manager.py”, line 134, in driver_load
driver_class = classloader(module_path, class_name)
File “./src/common/classloader.py”, line 52, in classloader
a_module = import(module_name, globals(), locals(), [])
File “./src/devices/xbee/xbee_device_manager/xbee_device_manager.py”, line 74, in ?
import zigbee
ImportError: No module named zigbee

Obviously there’s no zigbee module on my Mac. Is there a compatibility layer kicking around that would allow me to develop the driver on my workstation? The compile/upload/reboot cycle is extremely tedious.

Thanks,
Brian

2

Hi Brian

You may want to check-out this post.

http://www.digi.com/support/forum/viewthread_thread,780#2842

I have been developing on my Mac using the DIGI routines pretty successfully using zigbee.py, a USB XBIB and the XBee module flashed as an API co-ordinator. I havent however tried Dia so would be interested to know if it works.

3

Thanks so much! This platform has so much potential, but finding documentation is a real challenge. :frowning:

4

There is documentation here:
http://www.idigi.com/resources.jsp

There is also the API Reference html within the iDigi Dia tree under "documentation.

The iDigi Dia Wiki:
http://www.digi.com/wiki/developer/index.php/IDigi_Dia_Wiki

The product manuals can all be found in this central location:
http://www.digi.com/support/productdetl.jsp?pid=3632&osvid=0&s=393&tp=3

So we have a few resources out there. After reviewing the information at the various links I posted, what is lacking or missing in our documentation?

I’d like to put in requests for whatever is missing, but I’d like your feedback first please.

5

Thanks for the links. I’ve seen most of them already, but — although I know there’s lots of docs out there — it doesn’t seem terribly cohesive: there’s lots of overlap and as someone fairly new to Digi’s products, I’ve found it difficult to put together a clear picture of what I should buy and how to use it. I ended up looking at Dia and the ConnectPort X4 because of the design contest, but I had a really hard time figuring out which kit to buy to get started; there’s a listing of the three kits, but nothing helping someone without a rudimentary understanding of the products to decide which to choose. I feel like the quick start guide to Dia does an admirable job of getting the basic counter driver up and running on the device, but without really understanding what the problem is that Dia is trying to solve.

Specifically, the Wiki is a great starting point, but pages like this one are confusing:
http://www.digi.com/wiki/developer/index.php/IDigi_Dia_Drivers_and_Presentations
Is there supposed to be a listing of drivers and presentations there?

I guess this is more of a bug, but it seems to me that Dia running on a PC (Mac, Linux, whatever) should have some kind of hardware support, without having to do what deancs did to pull bits and pieces together from various Digi software packages (although I am happy that it’s possible).