February 2026 Meetup
Matt delivers the news roundup
News Round-up
Headlines
DDD: MicroPython Community Booth
As mentioned last month, a few of us (Damien, Raf, Sean and I) attended DDD Melbourne and hosted a MicroPython Community Booth.
DDD was held at the Melbourne Town Hall and had around 600 attendees. The ‘booth’ was super busy, we had a steady stream of people coming through the entire day - and it felt like we spoke to a significant percentage of those 600 attendees!
We’d hastily pulled together some demos so there was plenty of flashing LEDs, eye-catching displays and cute gadgets on display to draw people in.
A huge thanks to everyone who helped out and to the DDD organisers that supported our attendance.
And welcome to those of you present today that we met at DDD!
Meetup 🡆 Luma
…aaaand that’s that! I’ve now cancelled the Meetup subscription.
Scummy: When you start the cancel process, then they offer a discount to stick around.
Also Scummy: They start asking other members to host/pay the subscription.
Housekeeping
Publishing the videos often occurs after this Melbourne MicroPython Meetup blog is updated. So the videos have traditionally not been included. Mostly because I’m lazy and don’t update the blog after the initial post.
However! I was recently inspired and revised the previous year or two of posts, updating them with links to the published videos. So they’re now at the top of the blog post
As always, thanks to Barry for processing and publishing the vids!
Hardware News
Dabao
Andrew “bunnie” Huang is - via Crowd Supply - bringing the Dabao board to market with the help of Sean “xobs” Cross. The Dabao is a fascinating board with some unique properties:
- RISC-V Vexriscv Core @ 350MHz
- 2MB RAM, 4MB RRAM (Resistive RAM aka memresistor; like flash)
- USB HS
- Quad core IO accelerator (based on PicoRV32)
- 2x UART, 3x I2C, 2x SPI, 4x PWM
But the most notable parts for me are: 1) It’s as open as possible, 2) there’s an MMU on a micro!
Bunnie and Xobs presented at last years’ Chaos Communication Congress about their work getting the micro built and creating the Rust-based OS, ‘Xous’, that also has some interesting attributes, particularly how it takes advantage of the MMU, the talk is well worth your time!
Pimoroni Badgeware: Badger, Tufty, Blinky
Pimoroni have updated some of their ‘badge’ boards and consolidated them into a family: Badgeware! There are three badges, Badger, Tufty and Blinky - they’re all based around the RP2350 with 8MB RAM and 16MB flash, Wifi/BLE and an 1000mAh battery. The differences are in the displays: e-paper, IPS and white LED.
Excellent products, all ‘round!
£49.50 ea (~A$95)
Olimex ESP32-P4-PC
Olimex released the ESP32-P4-PC, another P4-based board that is like a little mini-PC.
Big bang-for-buck!
- ESP32-P4, dual 400MHz RISC-V
- 768KB internal RAM, 32MB PSRAM, 16MB flash
- Ethernet with PoE
- MIPI CSI and DSI
- HDMI
- Audio output jack
- Battery charge/sense circuit
25€ (~A$42)
Inkplate 13SPECTRA
Soldered released the Inkplate 13SPECTRA:
- 13-inch 1600x1200 E-Ink SPECTRA color e-paper
- Six colors: black, white, yellow, red, blue, green
- ESP32-S3, 32 MB flash, 16 MB PSRAM
- Ultra-Low Power: 14 µA deep-sleep current
- Wi-Fi, BLE, USB-C, 3x Qwiic
- Onboard microSD card slot and RTC w memory + battery
- JST connector for 3.7V Li-ion battery
And, sure enough, they’ve committed to continuing with MicroPython support.
US$309 or US$349 with an enclosure and 3000mAh battery
Other news
mpytool
In Discussion #18787, Pavel Revak announces that he’s been working on mpytool, an alternative to mpremote.
While I’d prefer people contribute to mpremote so everyone can benefit, there are certainly some interesting ideas in mpytool! In particular, Pavel has implemented a mount-like feature but compiles to bytecode transparently with mpy-cross on the PC. There’s also the ability to copy files with compression and to symlink files into a mounted filesystem.
I hope to see some of these features uplifted to mpremote at some point!
mpy_vt: Optimized ANSI Terminal Engine for MicroPython
mpy_vt by Vincent M aims to get an ANSI terminal running well on MicroPython. Wrapping the mature st (suckless terminal), vi, and providing solid hardware support for the LilyGo T-Deck, this is a powerful, portable little unit that can Telnet into whatever box you like!
Planet Innovation open-sources MicroPython hardware drivers
I’m happy to report that Planet Innovation have open-sourced five new MicroPython hardware drivers:
- NXP PCA9635 LED Controller
- NXP PCA9535 GPIO Extender
- FT24CXXA I2C EEPROM family
- Opticon MDC200 UART barcode scanner
- Microchip MCP3462 SPI ADC
rMach
rMach is a minimalist, Mach-inspired microkernel designed for resource-constrained environments (ESP32/RP2040) running MicroPython. It fits in 702 lines of code and consumes just 19.9 KB of RAM.
(via reddit)
Virtual Pet
Moonbench announced that they’ve open-sourced a Virtual Pet implementation for the ESP32: catode32. Tested on the ESP32-C6 and C3 it ought to port to any device with little effort.
100 days, 100 IoT projects
Kritish Mohapatra, a 3rd-year EE undergrad, has a goal of 100 days, 100 IoT projects! He’s using ESP32’s or Raspberry Pi Pico’s and MicroPython - and documenting the whole process.
Day 58 has just passed by at the time of writing, and Kritish has a great collection of projects: irrigation systems, servo control, web-based interfaces, devices communicating over ESP-NOW…there’s plenty here to learn from and I’m delighted that he’s documenting everything so thoroughly.
If you want to support Kritish’s open source effort, he’d happily receive GitHub sponsorship or even just buy him a coffee.
Quick Bytes
IndyPy: Python meets Microcontrollers
Last month I mentioned that I’d attended an IndyPy event where Drew Westrick presented about using MicroPython; that talk is now available to watch online: Speed up IOT Prototyping with MicroPython.
WorldTimeAPI: Sunset!
Less than a couple of weeks after I published a MicroPython library to the excellent WorldTimeAPI…it has been sunset! Closed down after 7 years of service. What timing!
Final Thoughts
Nearby Glasses
A project by Yves Jeanrenaud recently popped up, Nearby Glasses, that attempts to detect when Smart Glasses are nearby and alert the user. It’s now available as an Android app.
It uses some heuristics based on BLE data for the decision-making…and it strikes me that this would be a perfect MicroPython application!
Midjourney fun
The WorldTimeAPI has been sunset
