August 2026 Meetup
Damien covers the recently released v1.29, Matt delivers the news roundup.
MicroPython v1.29
Damien covers the recently released v1.29:
News Round-up
Matt delivers the news roundup:
Headlines
MicroPython v1.29 is released!
Released just a few days ago, MicroPython v1.29.0 is here! Go check out Damien’s detailed release notes.
(And yes, USB NCM made it in!)
CircuitPython Day…and 400 issues of Python on Hardware!
Adafruit determined that August 21st was CircuitPython Day, a day to celebrate all things CircuitPython. A bunch of interesting videos were published to the Adafruit YouTube channel on the CircuitPython Day 2026 playlist. Happy CircuitPython Day to our cousins!
And another milestone worth celebrating; the 400th issue of the Python on Hardware newsletter! Congrats to the team - and especially to editor, Anne Barela - for putting together such a valuable resource to the community for so long. Subscribe at Adafruit Daily.
ColdCard vulnerability: US$100M in bitcoin stolen
ColdCard is a bitcoin wallet; a device to keep bitcoin keys and transactions safe. However, a vulnerability in ColdCoin was exploited that allowed bitcoins to be stolen. The estimate of the damage is in the order of US$100M (!).
ColdCard used MicroPython for part of their implementation. MicroPython wasn’t at fault, but Damien has a Coldcard postmortem from MicroPython’s perspective.
Other write-ups: Critical Coldcard flaw: what happened, who is affected, and what to do When random.bytes() runs but doesn’t work Flaw in Coldcard Firmware Build Pipeline Leads to $38 Million Bitcoin Heist
Infineon PSOC Edge micrcontrollers
I’m going to defer this another month as I don’t yet have any PSOC Edge hardware.
Housekeeping
Luma
Working ok? Everyone getting reminders?
Hardware news
WCH CH32V407/467
The WCH CH32V407/467 are now available and they pack a heck of a punch:
- RISC-V core @200MHz
- 200KB SRAM
- 4MB or 8MB PSRAM memory (CH32V467 only)
- 512KB Flash
- 100Mbps Ethernet MAC and 10Mbps/100Mbps PHY
- USB – 2x USB 2.0 High-speed host/device (480Mbps)
- Up to 77x GPIO
Hackster.io WCH Electronics’ CH32V407 Packs Vector Extensions for a Speed Boost — Plus Optional PSRAM
They’ll be cheap. Likely less than US$3/unit.
Baochip News
The Baochip was used in the DEFCON 34 badge which means there are a bunch - 27,000! - more of these chips in the wild being hacked on! The baochip discord increased from 800 users to ~2000 over the DEFCON weekend.
We’ve also got the experimental MicroPython has quite a lot of features now (I2C, SPI, RTC, GPIO, USB CDC, WDT, PWM). port, which
Phil at Adafruit has also been experimenting with the Baochip, doing some very cool audio work with it.
M5Stack M5PaperMono [Lite]
M5Stack have released a pair of e-ink devices. The M5PaperMono and the M5PaperMono Lite.
Specs:
- 800x480 4” 4-level greyscale e-ink display
- With touch controller and front light
- ESP32-S3 with 16MB flash, 8MB PSRAM
- 6-axis IMU, microSD, PDM mic, buzzer
- 1150mAh battery
- LoRa & NFC (not present on Lite)
US$65 and US$55 [Note: out of stock on day 1!]
Daisy Seed3
Popular in the audio space, the Daisy Seed3 is a powerful micro in a tiny package. It’s recently had a minor bump in specs, moving to USB-C and featuring a new audio codec.
Specs:
- STM32H7 Cortex-M7 MCU @ 480MHz
- 192kHz/32-Bit Stereo Audio Hardware
- 65MB RAM
- 8MB flash
- 31x GPIO
- 16-Bit ADC x12
- 12-Bit DAC x2
US$30 [Also out of stock!]
ESP-Mosaico
Espressif have slowly started making their ESP32-S31 available and the ESP-Mosaico is the latest of their dev boards to feature the new micro.
Looks very influenced by M5Stack!
Specs:
- ESP32-S31, 16MB flash, 16MB RAM
- 480x480 touch display
- 6-axis IMU and dual magnetometers
- Magnetic expansion to connect multiple devices at the edges
Matts New Hardware
Dry month!
Nothing significant…except some motors and encoders. Andrew and I may talk about that in the future…
Other news
Arcade Classics in MicroPython on the Fruit Jam
Sam Neggs is at it again, making awesome retro games in MicroPython! This time he has a bunch of games and he’s running them on the RP2350-powered Adafruit Fruit Jam - which has the benefit of DVI output.
Not only is there a great video but Sam has taken the time to write up his strategy for making the games:
Inside a Fruit Jam Console - Field Notes
We should also mention Sparkfun’s HSTX MR, which is what Sam uses for DVI output. The HSTX is a high-speed peripheral on the RP2350 that appears to have had include DVI output as part of it’s design. Very cool.
I also have a board definition for the Fruit Jam ready-to-go but it probably makes sense for the HSTX MR to land first.
PyScript enters maintenance mode
Andrea Giammarchi announces that PyScript is entering maintenance mode.
That doesn’t mean the project is dead! But it is largely feature-complete.
Pythons Quiet Takeover of IoT and Robotics
MicroPython and CircuitPython: Pythons Quiet Takeover of IoT and Robotics
Live London bus departures board
Marcio Lopes shares that he’s built a Live London bus departures board on a Pimoroni Badger 2350. As well as the bus times, the weather is also displayed and Marcio has given some serious thought about power use; the device should run for a week or more on battery. Github link to the code: tfl-bus-arrivals-badger2350
Tabby delivers SSH on the M5Stack Tab5
Leslie Leung has an ESP IDF project, Tabby, that allows the M5Stack Tab5 to establish SSH connections. It also includes a bunch of other features including bundling a build of MicroPython into the system.
via SSH, MicroPython and more on a M5Stack Tab5
Automatically Retrofitting JIT Compilers
At QCon London, Laurence Tratt discusses yk, an open-source meta-tracing JIT compiler framework. He shares how to automatically speed up C-based language interpreters like Lua and MicroPython with minimal, non-invasive code changes.
It’s a different approach to ahead-of-time compiling as it looks for optimisations at runtime; hot paths that could be optimised. Looks pretty interesting!
Automatically Retrofitting JIT Compilers
Building a Smart Home Device with MicroPython
by Michał Karzyński, at EuroPython 2026:
ibScaleMPFeeder
From the Showcase channel on Discord, James shares that he’s built a drop-in replacement for the LumenPNP 8mm/12mm feeders. The LumenPNP is a popular open-source Pick ‘n’ Place machine to assemble circuit boards.
The ibScaleMPFeeder repo contains the schematic, PCB layout and MicroPython code.
“I made a replacement motherboard for the LumenPNP 8/12mm tape feeders based on an STM32F411CE . It has a serial console over USB, DRV8837 motor controlers, quad encoder feedback, and RS485 implementing the Photon feeder protocol. Used as much native hardware as I could to avoid bit-banging. Only thing I couldn’t do that with was a onewire EEPROM. Pretty happy with how it’s turned out.
Quick bytes
Schrödinger’s Toilet: Are You in There or Not?
On hackster.io, user otojun created a simple device (M5Stack StampS3 and ST ToF sensor) to detect when someone was in the toilet and light an LED so folks outside could tell. Great write-up - including MicroPython code - on hackster.io:
Schrödinger’s Toilet: Are You in There or Not?
This $4 Computer is Flying my Drone
Friend of the Meetup, Tim Hanewich posts a neat YouTube short explaining how his drone is built on MicroPython running on an RP Pico:
Midjourney fun
