Photon is Open-Source firmware for pick and place feeders.

A feeder is a small machine that moves component tape very small, precise increments in order to automatically serve up new components to a pick and place machine.

Photon was originally developed as part of the LumenPnP project, but it is designed to support many types of hardware.

Picking a Release

If you're looking to update to the latest stable release, use the release tagged Latest. Do NOT use a Pre-Release firmware, or one with rc in the name. We release lots of Release Candidate (denoted with an rc in the version name) firmware builds that are still being tested. If you're interested in testing the latest build, then the rc fimware is for you!

Building and uploading

We use platformio for building, testing, and uploading this firmware. Refer to their docs for basic instructions on using platfomio.

The default pio environment is intended for use with a Black Magic Probe for uploading a debugging:

pio run

However, if you just want to program the feeder over UART, such as with the FTDI USB UART bridge included with the LumenPnP, you can use:

pio run -e photon-serial -t upload --upload-port /dev/tty...