In this video lesson we show how we can send and receive data between the Raspberry Pi Pico W, and your PC. We will be running python on the PC, and we will exchange data using the UDP protocol. UDP is simple, and a very reliable way to send data packets back and forth. In this example, we will be demonstrating a simple Client Server relationship between the Pi Pico and PC using UDP over WiFi.
In this lesson, we will just be showing simple exchange of data, but in preparation for future lessons, go ahead and build this circuit.
For your convenience, this is the “Server” software you will run on the Pi Pico.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 | import network import usocket as socket import secrets import time wlan = network.WLAN(network.STA_IF) wlan.active(True) wlan.connect(secrets.SSID,secrets.PASSWORD) # Wait for connection while not wlan.isconnected(): time.sleep(1) print("Connection Completed") print('WiFi connected') print(wlan.ifconfig()) # Set up UDP server server_socket = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM) server_socket.bind((wlan.ifconfig()[0], 12345)) print("Server is Up and Listening") print(wlan.ifconfig()[0]) while True: print('Waiting for a request from the client...') # Receive request from client request, client_address = server_socket.recvfrom(1024) print("Client Request:",request.decode()) print("FROM CLIENT",client_address) # String to send data = "225,128,64" # Send data to client server_socket.sendto(data.encode(), client_address) print(f'Sent data to {client_address}') # Optional: Pause for a short period to prevent overwhelming the client time.sleep(1) |
Notice that the above code wants to load a “secrets” file that contain your WiFi name, and password
You should edit the code below with your WiFi username and your password, and then save the file in the Pi Pico lib folder, with the name secrets.py (don’t forget the .py)
1 2 | SSID="YOUR WIFI NAME" PASSWORD="YOUR WIFI PASSWORD" |
Now, on the PC side, you will run your client, which will be run in Python. Here is the client software:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 | import socket import time # Set up UDP client client_socket = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM) server_address = ('192.168.88.71', 12345) # Adjust IP address and port as needed while True: # Send request to the server request_message = "SEND DATA" client_socket.sendto(request_message.encode(), server_address) # Receive data from the server data, addr = client_socket.recvfrom(1024) print('Received data:', data.decode()) # Send acknowledgment back to server #ack_message = "Data received successfully" #client_socket.sendto(ack_message.encode(), addr) # Wait for 10 seconds before next request time.sleep(10) |