Matt delivered the news roundup, Lachlan and Brian give an amazing demonstration of the Propeller 2 microcontroller.

News roundup

Hardware to tinker with tonight

• Blyst Nano
• OpenMV Cam H7
• Self-balancing Bala
• Fomu
• Papyr
• PyBoard D
• I2CDriver (and SPIDriver)

Season of Docs

• MicroPython has applied to Google for their first Season of Docs
• Unfortunately the application wasn’t successful :(
• Read our proposal
• Good news: We now have some clear direction where to take the documentation

MicroPython video tutorials

• #1 - Let’s get started
• #2 - Hit the Ground Running
• #3 - Some Fundamentals
• #4 - PWM, ADC, Timers and Interrupts
• #5 - JSON & Network Modules + Practical Example

PyCon AU 2019

• August 2-6 @ ICC Sydney
• Talks to be announced 2 June
• There have been at least a few MicroPython talks submitted…fingers crossed!

PyCon 2019

• Nina Zakharenko: Light up your life - with Python and LEDs
• Scott Shawcroft: History of CircuitPython
• Many other talks of course

MicroPython on SAMD

• Microchip SAMD make a popular range of microcontrollers
  • Adafruit make many boards using these
  • SAMD21 - low power ARM Cortex M0
  • SAMD51 - ARM Cortex M4
• Damien has taken the first steps toward a port
  • MicroPython on Trinket M0 and ItsyBitsy M4
  • TinyUSB port underway

New ESP32-S2

• Announcement and Hackaday
• New core - better FP - but only one
• More GPIO (42), more cap touch (14)
• No Bluetooth
• Less RAM (320KB)
• USB support
• LCD and Camera support
• Security features (AES, RSA)
• Aiming to be cheaper

CircuitPython 4.0.0

• Huge release, congrats to the CircuitPython folks!
• Big ticket items
  • Nordic nRF52840
  • Displayio
  • USB MIDI
  • Multiple language support

PicoJPEG

• ‘Shazz’ saw Damien’s talk on wrapping a C module that used Nano JPEG
  • Which ultimately didn’t work since Nano JPEG used a lot of memory
• PicoJPEG is a small library designed to work on microcontrollers
• Shazz published a repo that has a new module wrapping PicoJPEG!

32blit

• Pimoroni folks
• STM32H750 400MHz, 1MB SRAM
• 32MB Flash
• 320x240 display, speaker, buttons, joystick, accelerometer, battery
• AU$120 (beta) AU$175

Adafruit PyGamer

• Adafruit PyGamer
• SAMD51@120MHz
• 8MB Flash
• 160x128 display
• Accelerometer, light sensor
• US$40

Nordic Dev Board

• 256KB RAM, 1MB Flash
• USB
• Bluetooth
• US$10

US$14 ESP32 VGA/mouse/keyboard…

• HackerNews
• TTGO driving prices right down
• Weird collection of hardware
• VGA, PS2 connectors
• 4MB QSPI flash/8MB PSRAM
• Games - demos available

LedCade

• Currently atmega328
• But could squeeze anything in there!

Propeller 2 Microcontroller

Take a look as Lachlan and Brian explain what a Parallax Propeller 2 microcontroller is and demonstrate what it can do.

The unique capabilities of this chipset are discussed in detail - users of the Propeller 1 are going to love this deep dive!

MicroPython would really help to unlock the power of this chipset…