This repository is a collection of useful information about the Lego Mindstorms 51515 and Lego SPIKE Prime hub.

To connect to the hub you have two options, a micro USB cable or bluetooth. Both options create a serial connection between the hub and the computer. At the hub end of this serial connection is a micropython REPL (Read Evaluate Print Loop). You can use this REPL to run python commands just like you would in the python interpreter on your computer.

To connect on Linux you will normall use:

• /dev/ttyACM0 for USB connections.
• /dev/rfcomm0 for bluetooth connections.

Dumps of the micropython filesystem on the Lego hub using rshell.

rshell
> connect serial /dev/ttyACM0 115200
> rsync -a /pyboard ~/filesystem

Long version numbers are from running the help(hub) command on the board. Short versions numbers are from the version.py files where available.

Dumps of the firmware on the Lego hub using the micropython REPL.

import firmware
firmware.flash_read(BYTE_NUMBER)

The first versions of the firmware on the device do not have the firmware library. To dump these you have to use the DFU tool after booting the device into DFU mode.

To boot the device into DFU mode:

1. Turn the hub off and disconnect the USB wire from your computer.
2. Hold down the bluetooth button and plug in the USB wire to your computer.
3. Keep holding the bluetooth button until it starts flashing in a cycle (pink-green-blue-off).
4. The hub is now in DFU mode.
5. The dfu-util program can be used to extract the firmware, see the script below.

# Install the dfu-util program if you do no already have it.
# sudo apt-get install dfu-util

# List the connected devices, this should show the hub is connected.
sudo dfu-util --list

# Read the firmware.
sudo dfu-util --alt 0 --dfuse-address 0x08000000:1048576 --upload ~/firmware.bin

# Take ownership of the file created by the dfu-util program.
sudo chown $(whoami) firmware.bin

# Remove the first 0x8000 bytes, as these are before the firmware starts.
fallocate -c -o 0 -l 32768 firmware.bin

# Remove the trailing bytes that have the value 0xFF, as these are unnecessary.
sed -i '$ s/\xFF*$//' firmware.bin

# Rename the firmware to the md5 hash of itself.
mv firmware.bin $(md5sum firmware.bin | awk '{ print $1 }').bin

Long version numbers are from running the help(hub) command on the board. Short versions numbers are from the version.py files where available.

A recreation of the spike prime hardware using python to allow testing and debugging python scripts on a PC.

The aim is to create a script to dump the functions of the real hardware and then mock them to allow local development.

Currently there is two main scripts one to simulate running micropython scripts on a hub and one to push micropython scripts to a real connected hub. The simulator uses a mocked implementation of the micropython modules available on the phyical hub that redirect actions to the simulator gui.

The Lego specification pdfs for the electrical parts of the Lego hub.