Matt Trentini covered the latest news, Damien schooled us on Native Modules (part II) and interstate guess Jim Mussared talked the recent developments on BLE on MicroPython.

News roundup

New Hardware…

• M5stickV
  • Kendryte K210, dual-core 400MHz, 8MB RAM, 16MB flash, camera, display, audio
• Ronoth LoDev
  • S76S SiP (STM32L073 - 20KB RAM, 192KB flash, SX1276 LoRa radio)

Teensy 4.0

• New Teensy 4.0 Blows Away Benchmarks
• Cortex M7 @600MHz 1MB RAM, 2MB flash
  • NXP iMXRT1062
• 2xUSB @480MHz, 3xSPI, 3xI2C, 7xSerial
• 40x digital pins, 14 analog (2xADC)
• Small
• A MicroPython (OpenMV) port available
• US$20

Orange Crab

• Greg Davill’s latest project…
• Feather form-factor
• Lattice ECP5 FPGA
• 1GB DDR3 RAM, 16MB flash
• Expecting to port Fomu MicroPython
• “Half of the parts are just 0201 decoupling caps”
• Twitter thread

Stage

• Stage, a Tile and Sprite Engine has been released by Deshipu
• Runs on M5Stack, or against ST7735 displays
• C for fast blitting but mostly MicroPython
• More details in the forum

PyLadies workshop

• PyLadies MicroPython on October 21
• Taking the opportunity to improve the beginner experience
• Want to put together a beginner kit
  • Could be used at the meetup
  • Folks could optionally purchase them
• Base it around the Wemos ESP8266 with shields
  • No breadboarding!
  • Affordable

Slack and Unexpected Maker Discord Server

• More than 200 users now on Slack (auto invite)
• Unexpected Maker has a Discord Server

ASCII 0_1 Stream

• First tutorial I’ve seen for M5stickV
• Short MicroPython example
  • Converts video to ASCII

Native Modules in MicroPython (part 2)

Back in February Damien gave a talk on Native Modules in MicroPython. The feature has come a long way and it was time for an update!

Damien walks through the details around creating a native module and deploying it - for multiple platforms…

Jim has been working hard to bring BLE to life in MicroPython. Recently he’s submitted PR5051 that lays the foundation for BLE on all MicroPython ports. Listen to Jim as he discusses the design decisions that led to the current implementation.