If you work with microcontrollers you must have heard of PlatformIO. It is a tool which we can use to program and debug multiple families of microcontrollers in various frameworks with little to no manual setup work. PlatformIO takes care of installing the tool, setting up the project, build, upload and debug. PlatformIO comes with an extension for VS Code which wraps the underlaying PlatformIO cli tool and exposes a very nice interface to setup project and use other tools. But if you are a n/vim user like me, you only have the cli. I was fine with cli but I wanted that ease of use like VS Code extension so I made this neovim plugin called nvim-platformio.lua

Installation process

Install the PlatformIO core

curl -fsSL -o get-platformio.py https://raw.githubusercontent.com/platformio/platformio-core-installer/master/get-platformio.py
python3 get-platformio.py

Now check if you have PlatformIO cli ready to use

pio --version

Added anurag3301/nvim-platformio.lua plugin and its dependencies for installation in your neovim package manager, here I have given example for lazy.nvim

return {
    "anurag3301/nvim-platformio.lua",
    dependencies = {
        { "akinsho/nvim-toggleterm.lua" },
        { "nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim" },
        { "nvim-lua/plenary.nvim" },
    },
}

And that's you have nvim-platformio.lua and PlatformIO ready to be used 🥳.

Usage

Setup a project

Create a new directory for the project and cd into it, in my case ill be using a ESP32.

mkdir esp_project
cd esp_project

Open neovim and run :Pioinit, this will open a telescope picker where you can fuzzy find and select the board you want to use. Then press enter.

After selecting the board, you'll have option to select the desired framework such as Arduino, ESP-IDF, STM32 Cube etc. And press enter.
Now a toggleterm window will pop up which will run the pio project setup command and install any missing tools or dependencies.
Now you should have a PlatformIO project setup with .ccls file which will let your LSP make aware of the include path for the libraries.
Open the src/main.c file and write the code. In my case I wrote a simple ESP-IDF code which blink led and print to Serial line.

#include "freertos/FreeRTOS.h"
#include "freertos/task.h"
#include "driver/gpio.h"
#include "esp_log.h"

#define BLINK_GPIO 12

void app_main() {
    gpio_pad_select_gpio(BLINK_GPIO);
    gpio_set_direction(BLINK_GPIO, GPIO_MODE_OUTPUT);
    while(1) {
        gpio_set_level(BLINK_GPIO, 1);
        ESP_LOGI("LED", "LED ON");
        vTaskDelay(1000 / portTICK_PERIOD_MS);
        gpio_set_level(BLINK_GPIO, 0);
        ESP_LOGI("LED", "LED OFF");
        vTaskDelay(1000 / portTICK_PERIOD_MS);
    }
}

Compile and flash the code by running :Piorun.
Open the serial monitor to see the output by running :Piomon

This was a brief introduction to PlatformIO and nvim-platformio.lua.

Run :help PlatformIO to see the detailed usage and option for each command.

Checkout platformio.ini docs for project configuration.

PlatformIO cli to extend usage.

Intro to nvim-platformio.lua

Installation process

Usage

Setup a project