Adding existing ot-cli commands to pyspinel for NCP architecture

[rretanubun]

Hello,

My platform is SiLABS ThunderSense2 and I am trying to use ot-ftd-ncp demo app (thead-1.3)

I am able to communicate with it using pyspinel but a bit surprised that only a very small subset of command is available (dataset for example is missing). The plan in mind to to eventually pair the NCP with another (non-linux) embedded device and communicate using spinel.

Is there a good reference commit on how to add ot-cli supported command to pyspinel? Does every ot-cli command added automatically have a SPINEL.PROP defined on the ot-code side that I should match?

The closest recent example I came across is this:

openthread/pyspinel@aefaa1e

Thank you for everyone's time.

[jwhui]

I am able to communicate with it using pyspinel but a bit surprised that only a very small subset of command is available (dataset for example is missing). The plan in mind to to eventually pair the NCP with another (non-linux) embedded device and communicate using spinel.

pyspinel has not been actively supported for some time. As a result, some of the more recent features have not been implemented. The dataset command, as you noted, is one of those unimplemented commands.

Is there a good reference commit on how to add ot-cli supported command to pyspinel? Does every ot-cli command added automatically have a SPINEL.PROP defined on the ot-code side that I should match?

Not every OT CLI command has a matching Spinel property. Note that Spinel was originally designed to be a property-based interface, which is a different model from OT CLI. Spinel does support getting/setting Active Operational Datasets, but how that is done differs from OT CLI.

openthread/src/lib/spinel/spinel.h

Line 2684 in cba1beb

/// Thread Active Operational Dataset

[jwhui]

I'm not aware of any host-side implementation for NCP on embedded MCUs.

However, host-side implementation for RCP on embedded MCUs does exist. The ESP Thread Border Router is one example.

[rretanubun]

Apologies for not phrasing the question well. If it helps I can open this as a new topic.

I have a working ot-ftd prototype that uses the SoC architecture.
it uses DNS-SRP server+client and CoAP as provided by thread. Interaction happens via ot-cli.
The next step is to pair this solution to another (non-linux) host-MCU via SPI and let it control it.
The host-MCU is already busy doing other things and RCP is not a good fit for this solution.

So, I am looking for a good starting point to do machine to machine based ot-cli interactions.
Is spinel still the best approach here?

For example, looking at spinel.h I do not see entries for SRP Server. One of the interactions
the solution needs to do is (ot-cli) srp server host and get back all the registered end device
(to get a sense of how many registered devices are present in the network)

If I want to add that to spinel, I am trying to get a sense of Is that a well-travelled path I can mainline later? or
Will this need a lot of non-mainline refactoring?

Thank you for your time!

[jwhui]

Spinel is one approach but, as mentioned, many of the newer features are not implemented including SRP.

An alternative path may be to use the CLI directly.

[rretanubun]

Thanks Jonathan. Confirming my understanding from your comment, in the NCP mode does the openthread stack has the same set of openthread API and capabilities as the SOC mode (going by https://openthread.io/platforms/co-processor#network_co-processor_ncp) - or is it missing the newer features (beyond just adding Spinel access to the APIs)

[jwhui]

Exposing newer features via Spinel is a primary issue. However, if you are looking to support a Thread Border Router, then more needs to be done to properly support the Thread Border Router features.

[simonlingoogle]

I think it's actually might be a good idea to support CLI commands via NCP for debugging purposes.
But it is controversial and needs notable development efforts (to integrate openthread-cli with openthread-ncp).