Note: all the source code contained in this repository is for educational use only, and is provided with no support, endorsement, warranty, guarantee or implied fitness for a particular purpose. It does not constitute sample driver code. Do not reach out to VMware to support this code. Do not copy and reuse in any commercial or product setting.

thpimon

Native ESXi on Arm hardware status driver for the Raspberry Pi.

Using the Python library, you can currently get the board revision and temperature.

Currently work-in-progress, the driver is capable of communicating with the VideoCore firmware using fixed-size buffers (so no console).

Sample Output

Taken from a Raspberry Pi 4B:

$ /scratch/downloads/pyUtil/pimon_util.py
Firmware Revision:      0x5f440c10
Board Model:            0
Board Revision:         0xc03111
Board MAC Address:      d6:51:4:32:a6:dc
Board Serial:           0x000000664b0067
Temp:                   60.0 (deg. C)

Installation

To install the driver, download the VIB file in the build directory and copy it to your RPi.

Install it as described here: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2008939

Note: you will need to reboot the RPi after installing the VIB.

I would recommend downloading the Python library in ./pyUtil/pimonLib/ to interact with the thpimon character device.

Note: You may need to manually change the PIMON_DEVICE_PATH variable in ./pyUtil/gpioLib/__init__.py to reflect the correct name for the character device. I'm digging through the VMKAPI to find a way to name the character device upon creation, so stay tuned.

Other Branches

If you want to try auto-configuring the name of the PIMON_DEVICE_PATH, check out: https://github.com/thebel1/thpimon/tree/autoconf

If you want to take screenshots of your Pi, check out: https://github.com/thebel1/thpimon/tree/fbuf