Building the Matter Python Controller

chip-device-ctrl can be used as a controller for sending commands to a Matter device as well as commission it. It is part of the Python controller tools and can be built from the connectedHomeip repo from a script

If you followed our prerequisites, you should be in a directory within ~/matter_dev/connectedhomeip

This connectedhomeip folder should be a Matter git repository, bootstraped at least

If you did activate the environement, that will not be a problem

However, if you did not have an such folder please go back to prerequisites and perform all steps again

Bulding

Go to your connectedhomeip repository and launch the following script:

cd ~/matter_dev/connectedhomeip

Start the build procedure

scripts/build_python.sh -m platform -d true
  

Note that the -d true switch enables debug mode which can be verbose and fill the screen with text.

You can type commands over the text directly, it will be taken into account

The build should end with :

Compilation completed and WHL package installed in:
  ./out/python_env

To use please run:
  source ./out/python_env/bin/activate
  

As mentioned by the build script, in order to use the tools run :

source out/python_env/bin/activate

This script runs the activation script that is needed before building any of the projects in the connectedhomeip repo so there is no need to do that separately.

Note that you will now be in a python virtual environment :

(python_env) ubuntu@ubuntu:~/matter_dev/connectedhomeip

In order to leave it, just use deactivate within the terminal :

(python_env) ubuntu@ubuntu:~/matter_dev/connectedhomeip$ deactivate
ubuntu@ubuntu:~/matter_dev/connectedhomeip$
  

To get more details about available build configurations, run the command scripts/build_python.sh --help

You will obtain a chip-device-ctrl binary located in out/python_env/bin/ directory

Troubleshoot

If you precisely follow all of the previous sections (including git checkouts and prerequisites), you should have built Python controller

Still, if you run into some of these issues:

Build fails Make sure you installed dependencies as mentioned in Matter Dev Environment support