Get Started¶
This document is intended to help users set up the software environment for the development of healthcare applications using hardware based on the BioSensor-F58GM. Through a simple example, we would like to illustrate how to use BIO-HDF (BioSensor Healthcare Development Framework).
To make the start with BIO-HDF quicker, We designed development boards intended to build healthcare applications with the BioSensor. Click the links below to get started.
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| Getting Started with Sleep-Strip | Coming soon … |
If you do not have one of the above boards, you can still use BIO-HDF for the BioSensor based healthcare applications. This is providing your board has a compatible MCU or DSP chip, or you develop a driver to support communication with your specific chip.For the porting of drivers and algorithms, you can apply for technical support by email：fanfeiwu@gmail.com.
About BIO-HDF¶
The BIO-HDF is available as a set of components to extend the functionality already delivered by the ESP-IDF (Espressif IoT Development Framework).
To use BIO-HDF you need set up the ESP-IDF first, and this is described in the next section.
Note
BIO-HDF is developed using stable version of ESP-IDF. If your have already set up another version, please switch to the stable, or you may not be able to compile BIO-HDF applications.
Set up ESP-IDF¶
Configure your PC according to ESP32 Documentation. Windows, Linux and Mac OS operating systems are supported.
You have a choice to compile and upload code to the ESP32 by command line with make or using Eclipse IDE.
Note
We are using ~/esp directory to install the toolchain, ESP-IDF, BIO-HDF and sample applications. You can use a different directory, but need to adjust respective commands.
To make the installation easier and less prone to errors, use the ~/esp default directory for the installation. Once you get through ESP-IDF setup and move to the BIO-HDF, you will notice that installation of the BIO-HDF follows the similar process. This should make it even easier to get up and running with the BIO-HDF.
If this is your first exposure to the ESP32 and ESP-IDF, then it is recommended to get familiar with hello_world and blink examples first. Once you can build, upload and run these two examples, then you are ready to proceed to the next section.
Get BIO-HDF¶
Having the ESP-IDF to compile, build and upload application for ESP32, you can now move to installing healthcare specific API / libraries. They are provided in BIO-HDF repository. To get it, open terminal, navigate to the directory to put the BIO-HDF, and clone it using git clone command:
cd ~/esp
git clone --recursive https://github.com/feelkit/bio-hdf.git
BIO-HDF will be downloaded into ~/esp/bio-hdf.
Note
Do not miss the --recursive option. If you have already cloned BIO-HDF without this option, run another command to get all the submodules:
cd ~/esp/bio-hdf
git submodule update --init
Setup Path to BIO-HDF¶
The toolchain programs access BIO-HDF using HDF_PATH environment variable. This variable should be set up on your PC, otherwise the projects will not build. The process to set it up is analogous to setting up the IDF_PATH variable, please see instructions in ESP-IDF documentation under Add IDF_PATH to User Profile.
Start a Project¶
After initial preparation you are ready to build the first healthcare application for the BioSensor. The process has already been described in ESP-IDF documentation. Now we would like to discuss again the key steps and show how the toolchain is able to access the BIO-HDF components by using the HDF_PATH variable.
Note
BIO-HDF is based on a specific release of the ESP-IDF. You will see this release cloned with BIO-HDF as a subdirectory, or more specifically as a submodule e.g. esp-idf @ ca3faa61 visible on the GitHub. Just follow this instruction and the build scripts will automatically reach ESP-IDF from the submodule.
To demonstrate how to build an application, we will use get-started/health_piezo project from examples directory in the HDF.
Copy get-started/health_piezo to ~/esp directory:
cd ~/esp
cp -r $HDF_PATH/examples/get-started/health_piezo .
You can also find a range of example projects under the examples directory in the BIO-HDF repository. These example project directories can be copied in the same way as presented above, to begin your own projects.
Connect and Configure¶
Connect the healthcare ESP32 board to the PC, check under what serial port the board is visible and verify, if serial communication works as described in ESP-IDF Documentation.
At the terminal window, go to the directory of health_piezo application and configure it with menuconfig by selecting the serial port, upload speed and the healthcare board version:
cd ~/esp/health_piezo
idf.py menuconfig
Save the configuration.
Build, Flash and Monitor¶
Now you can build, upload and check the application. Run:
idf.py flash
This will build the application including ESP-IDF / BIO-HDF components, upload (flash) binaries to your ESP32 board and start the monitor.
Upload¶
To upload the binaries, the board should be put into upload mode. To do so, hold down Reset button. The upload mode may be initiated anytime during the application build, but no later than “Connecting” message is being displayed:
...
esptool.py v2.1
Connecting........_____....
Without the upload mode enabled, after showing several ....._____, the connection will eventually time out.
Once build and upload is complete, you should see the following:
...
Leaving...
Hard resetting...
MONITOR
--- idf_monitor on /dev/ttyUSB0 115200 ---
--- Quit: Ctrl+] | Menu: Ctrl+T | Help: Ctrl+T followed by Ctrl+H ---
Monitor¶
Power on again to start the application. Following several lines of start up log, the health_piezo application specific messages should be displayed:
...
I (1519) FeelKit_HUart: health_hw_uart_init
...
I (1699) FeelKit_TCP: Waiting for AP connection...
I (1699) FeelKit_TCP: SYSTEM_EVENT_STA_START
I (1709) FeelKit_Comm: The hal has been initialized!
I (1709) BTDM_INIT: BT controller compile version [fd2a63b]
I (1719) system_api: Base MAC address is not set, read default base MAC address from BLK0 of EFUSE
I (1979) FeelKit_BLE: health_ble_init init bluetooth
I (2069) FeelKit_BLE: EVT 0, gatts if 3
I (2069) FeelKit_BLE: event = 0
I (2069) FeelKit_BLE: gatts_profile_event_handler 385
I (2079) FeelKit_BLE: gatts_profile_event_handler 388
I (2079) FeelKit_BLE: gatts_profile_event_handler 391
I (2089) FeelKit_Comm: The hal has been initialized!
I (2159) FeelKit_Stream: sensor_status = 0x0
...
If there are no issues, besides the above log, you should find:”FeelKit_Stream: sensor_status = 0x0”. if sensor_status != 0x0,then it is error.
Now you are ready to try some other examples, or go right to developing your own applications. Check how the examples are made aware of location of the BIO-HDF. Open the get-started/health_piezo/CMakeLists and you should see
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.5)
include($ENV{IDF_PATH}/tools/cmake/project.cmake)
include($ENV{HDF_PATH}/CMakeLists.txt)
project(health_piezo)
The third line contains $HDF_PATH to point the toolchain to the BIO-HDF. You need similar CMakeLists in your own applications developed with the BIO-HDF.
Update BIO-HDF¶
After some time of using BIO-HDF, you may want to update it to take advantage of new features or bug fixes. The simplest way to do so is by deleting existing bio-hdf folder and cloning it again, which is same as when doing initial installation described in sections get-started-get-bio-hdf.
Another solution is to update only what has changed. This method is useful if you have a slow connection to the GitHub. To do the update run the following commands:
cd ~/esp/bio-hdf
git pull
git submodule update --init --recursive
The git pull command is fetching and merging changes from BIO-HDF repository on GitHub. Then git submodule update --init --recursive is updating existing submodules or getting a fresh copy of new ones. On GitHub the submodules are represented as links to other repositories and require this additional command to get them onto your PC.