Thymio Device Manager

Standalone bridge between Thymio robots and applications using the TDM TCP and WebSocket protocol. This project includes the Aseba compiler and protocol support it needs; Qt, Thymio Suite, the simulator, and the separate firmware recovery CLI are not required or built. Firmware updating through the TDM remains available.

Run a release archive

Extract the archive and run bin/thymio-device-manager (Windows: bin\thymio-device-manager.exe). Keep bundled DLLs beside the Windows executable. Only one device manager can run at a time, including one started by Thymio Suite. Stop it with Ctrl+C. --help shows the existing options and exits with status 1.

The TCP endpoint uses port 8596 and the WebSocket endpoint uses port 8597. Remote connections remain disabled by default; --allow-remote-connections enables the existing remote-access behavior. There is no GUI or automatically installed service.

Supported release targets:

Archive	Minimum environment	Runtime prerequisites
Linux x64	Ubuntu 26.04 or compatible newer Linux	Avahi client libraries, D-Bus and running Avahi daemon; USB permissions
macOS universal	macOS 11+, Intel or Apple Silicon	System Bonjour and IOKit
Windows x64	Windows 10/11	Bonjour service, applicable Thymio USB drivers

On Ubuntu, install avahi-daemon libavahi-client3 and ensure avahi-daemon is running. Copy share/thymio-device-manager/70-thymio.rules from a release archive to /etc/udev/rules.d/, then run sudo udevadm control --reload-rules and reconnect the robot. The rule grants access to the active desktop user. A headless account needs a distribution-appropriate group-based USB permission rule instead.

On Windows, installing the x64 Bonjour service is separate from extracting the archive: the included dnssd.dll is its client library, not the service. Existing Bonjour installations can be used. The pinned legacy service installer is fetched into .cache/downloads/bonjour_msi-Bonjour64.msi by make deps for developer/CI setup; it is not silently installed or bundled in the binary archive. If a robot is not detected, install its Thymio USB driver through the device's normal driver setup. See runtime notes.

These releases have no trusted publisher signature or Apple notarization. macOS binaries use ad-hoc signatures; downloaded archives may require explicit approval in macOS Privacy & Security before execution.

Build locally

Requirements: Python 3.9+, CMake 3.25+, Ninja, curl, Perl, GNU Make, and a C++17 compiler. Sources are fetched at exact revisions with SHA-256 verification. The first build downloads approximately 270 MB and needs several GB of disk space. No installed Boost, OpenSSL, Aseba checkout, or Git submodules are needed.

Ubuntu 26.04:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential python3 cmake ninja-build curl perl pkg-config libavahi-client-dev avahi-daemon
make test JOBS=4
make package JOBS=4

Arch Linux (x86_64):

sudo pacman -Syu --needed base-devel python cmake ninja curl perl pkgconf avahi
sudo systemctl enable --now avahi-daemon.service
make test JOBS=4
make package JOBS=4

Arch's cmake package provides the required version without a pip installation. The avahi package includes the client libraries, development headers, and daemon; no separate -dev package is needed. For robot access, install the udev rule and reconnect the robot as described above for Ubuntu.

macOS (install Xcode Command Line Tools first):

brew install cmake ninja python make
make test JOBS=4
make package JOBS=4
make universal JOBS=4

make universal builds Intel and ARM dependencies separately, uses a native host flatc for schema generation, combines the binaries, and signs the final result. It executes the package startup check on the host architecture. CI tests each architecture natively and tests the combined executable on both.

Windows: install Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools with Desktop development with C++, Python, CMake, Ninja, GNU Make, Strawberry Perl and NASM. Put them on PATH and run in an x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2022:

set "PERL=C:\Strawberry\perl\bin\perl.exe"
make deps PYTHON=python JOBS=4
make test PYTHON=python JOBS=4
make package PYTHON=python JOBS=4

Adjust PERL if Strawberry Perl is installed elsewhere. This selects the native Windows interpreter even when Git Bash's Perl is also on PATH.

Install/start Bonjour before make test. GNU Make is only the command interface; the compiler is MSVC, not MinGW. Python can also invoke every action directly: python scripts/build.py build --preset windows-x64 --jobs 4.

Command	Result
make deps	Verified downloads and static Boost/OpenSSL plus host flatc
make configure	Dependencies and application CMake configuration
make build	Executable and tests
make test	Build, unit tests and daemon smoke test
make package	Native archive, runtime dependency checks and checksums
make universal	Universal macOS archive
make source	Source archive including all pinned dependency downloads
make clean	Remove build/; preserve download cache and release archives

PRESET defaults to the host. Explicit values: linux-x64, windows-x64, macos-x86_64, macos-arm64. JOBS defaults to 2 to limit compiler memory use. After make deps, the standard cmake --preset <preset>, cmake --build --preset <preset> and ctest --preset <preset> commands work too.

Build products go to build/<preset>/bin, packages to dist/. The source bundle includes .cache/downloads, allowing rebuilds without library downloads once the documented system tools and platform prerequisites are installed. To update a dependency, update its revision/URL and verified SHA-256 in dependencies.lock.json, run make clean, and validate all platforms. Do not replace Mobsya forks with unmodified upstream releases without testing their local patches.

Linux release packages target Ubuntu 26.04 and allow glibc symbol requirements up to 2.43. Compatibility with older Ubuntu releases is no longer guaranteed.

CI and releases

GitHub Actions builds and tests Linux x64, Windows x64, Intel macOS and ARM macOS. It publishes CI artifacts, merges a universal Mac archive, and tests that archive on both architectures. A v<VERSION> tag creates a draft GitHub release only after all checks pass, with platform archives, source archive and SHA256SUMS. No signing secrets are required. Set VERSION.txt before creating a matching tag.

See provenance, runtime details, and the hardware acceptance checklist.