This GitHub repository consists of the following parts:

• A tutorial An introductory tutorial on asynchronous programming and the use of the uasyncio library (asyncio subset).
• Asynchronous device drivers. A module providing drivers for devices such as switches and pushbuttons.
• Synchronisation primitives. Provides commonly used synchronisation primitives plus an API for task cancellation and monitoring.
• A driver for an IR remote control This is intended as an example of an asynchronous device driver. It decodes signals received from infra red remote controls using the popular NEC protocol.
• A driver for the HTU21D temperature and humidity sensor. This is intended to be portable across platforms and is another example of an asynchronous device driver.
• A driver for character LCD displays. A simple asynchronous interface to displays based on the Hitachi HD44780 chip.
• A driver for GPS modules Runs a background task to read and decode NMEA sentences, providing constantly updated position, course, altitude and time/date information.
• Communication between devices Enables MicroPython boards to communicate without using a UART. Primarily intended to enable a a Pyboard-like device to achieve bidirectional communication with an ESP8266.
• Under the hood A guide to help understand the uasyncio code. For scheduler geeks and those wishing to modify uasyncio.

This repo included asyncio_priority.py which is now deprecated. Its primary purpose was to provide a means of servicing fast hardware devices by means of coroutines running at a high priority. The official firmware now includes this major improvement which offers a much more efficient way of achieving this end. The tutorial has details of how to use this.

The current uasyncio suffers from high levels of latency when scheduling I/O in typical applications. It also has an issue which can cause bidirectional devices such as UART's to block.

A modified version of uasyncio is described here which provides an option for I/O scheduling with much reduced latency. It also fixes the bug. It is hoped that these changes will be accepted into mainstream in due course.

The documentation and code in this repository are based on uasyncio version 2.0, which is the version on PyPi and in the official micropython-lib. This requires firmware dated 22nd Feb 2018 or later. Use of the stream I/O mechanism requires firmware after 17th June 2018.

See tutorial for installation instructions.

These notes are intended for users familiar with asyncio under CPython.

The MicroPython language is based on CPython 3.4. The uasyncio library supports a subset of the CPython 3.4 asyncio library with some V3.5 extensions. In addition there are non-standard extensions to optimise services such as millisecond level timing and task cancellation. Its design focus is on high performance and scheduling is performed without RAM allocation.

The uasyncio library supports the following Python 3.5 features:

• async def and await syntax.
• Awaitable classes (using __iter__ rather than __await__).
• Asynchronous context managers.
• Asynchronous iterators.
• Event loop methods call_soon and call_later.
• sleep(seconds).

It supports millisecond level timing with the following:

• Event loop method call_later_ms
• uasyncio sleep_ms(time)

uasyncio V2 supports coroutine timeouts and cancellation.

• wait_for(coro, t_secs) runs coro with a timeout.
• cancel(coro) tags coro for cancellation when it is next scheduled.

Classes Task and Future are not supported.

Asynchronous I/O (StreamReader and StreamWriter classes) support devices with streaming drivers, such as UARTs and sockets. It is now possible to write streaming device drivers in Python.

For timing asyncio uses floating point values of seconds. The uasyncio.sleep method accepts floats (including sub-second values) or integers. Note that in MicroPython the use of floats implies RAM allocation which incurs a performance penalty. The design of uasyncio enables allocation-free scheduling. In applications where performance is an issue, integers should be used and the millisecond level functions (with integer arguments) employed where necessary.

The loop.time method returns an integer number of milliseconds whereas CPython returns a floating point number of seconds. call_at follows the same convention.

This library (docs) provides 'micro' implementations of the asyncio synchronisation primitives. CPython docs

It also supports a Barrier class to facilitate coroutine synchronisation.

Coroutine cancellation is performed in an efficient manner in uasyncio. The asyn library uses this, further enabling the cancelling coro to pause until cancellation is complete. It also provides a means of checking the 'running' status of individual coroutines.

A lightweight implementation of asyncio.gather is provided.