Python Your Keyboard Hack Chat With Adafruit

July 19, 2021 by Dan Maloney 10 Comments

Join us on Wednesday, July 21 at noon Pacific for the Python Your Keyboard Hack Chat with the Adafruit crew!

Especially over the last year and a half, most of us have gotten the feeling that there’s precious little distinction between our computers and ourselves. We seem welded together, inseparable even, attached as we are day and night to our machines as work life and home life blend into one gray, featureless landscape where time passes unmarked except by the accumulation of food wrappers and drink cans around our work areas. Or maybe it just seems that way.

Regardless, there actually is a fine line between machine and operator, and in most instances it’s that electromechanical accessory that we all love to hate: the keyboard. If you buy off the shelf, it’s never quite right — too clicky, not clicky enough, wrong spacing, bad ergonomics, or just plain ugly design. The only real way around these limitations is to join the DIY keyboard crowd and roll your own, specifically customized to your fingers and your needs — at least until you realize that it’s not quite perfect, and need to modify it again.

Hitting this moving target is often as much a software problem as it is a hardware issue, but as is increasingly the case these days, Python is ready to help. To go into depth on how Python can be leveraged for the custom keyboard builder, our good friends at Adafruit, including Limor “Ladyada” Fried, Phillip Torrone, Dan Halbert, Kattni Rembor, and Scott Shawcroft will stop by the Hack Chat. We suspect they’ll have some cool stuff to show off, in addition to sharing their tips and tricks for making DIY keyboards just right. If you’re building custom keebs, or even if you’re just “keyboard curious”, you won’t want to miss this one.

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, July 21 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a handy time zone converter.

ESP32-S2 And RP2040 Hack Chat With Adafruit

January 25, 2021 by Dan Maloney 20 Comments

Join us on Wednesday, January 27 at noon Pacific for the ESP32-S2 and RP2040 Hack Chat with Adafruit!

It’s always an event when we have Adafruit on the Hack Chat, and last time was no exception. Then, the ESP32-S2 was the new newness, and Adafruit was just diving into what’s possible with the chip. It’s an interesting beast — with a single core and no Bluetooth or Ethernet built-in, it appears to be less capable than other Espressif chips. But with a faster CPU, more GPIO and ADCs, a RISC-V co-processor, and native USB, the chip looked promising.

Among their other duties, the folks at Adafruit have spent the last six months working with the chip, and they’d now like to share what they’ve learned with the community. So Limor “Ladyada” Fried, Phillip Torrone, Scott Shawcroft, Dan Halbert, and Jeff Epler will stop by the Hack Chat to show us what’s under the hood of the ESP32-S2. They’ve worked on a bunch of projects using the chip, and they’ve taken a deep-dive into the chip’s deep-sleep capabilities, so stop by the Chat with your burning questions about low-power applications or anything ESP32-S2-related and ask away.

Plus, a late and exciting addition to the agenda: they’ll be talking about the recently released RP2040, the first custom chip from the folks at Raspberry Pi. We’ve already started talking about the Raspberry Pi Pico, the dev board that uses the chip, and Adafruit will share what they’ve learned about the RP2040 so far.

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, January 27 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a handy time zone converter.

Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io. You don’t have to wait until Wednesday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

Continue reading “ESP32-S2 And RP2040 Hack Chat With Adafruit” →

Python And The Internet Of Things Hack Chat

April 1, 2019 by Dan Maloney 6 Comments

Join us Wednesday at noon Pacific time for the Python and the Internet of Things Hack Chat!

Opinions differ about what the most-used programming language in right now is, but it’s hard to deny both the popularity and versatility of Python. In the nearly 30 years since it was invented it has grown from niche language to full-blown development environment that seems to be everywhere these days. That includes our beloved microcontrollers now with MicroPython, and Adafruit’s CircuitPython, greatly lowering the bar for entry-level hackers and simplifying and speeding development for old hands and providing a path to a Python-powered Internet of Things.

The CircuitPython team from Adafruit Industries – Dan Halbert, Kattni Rembor, Limor “Ladyada” Fried, Phillip Torrone, and Scott Shawcroft – will drop by the Hack Chat to answer all your questions about Python and the IoT. Join us as we discuss:

How CircuitPython came to be;
The range of IoT products that support Python;
Getting started with Python on IoT devices; and
What’s on the horizon for a Python-powered IoT?

And as extra enticement, we’ll be giving away five free one-year passes to Adafruit.io! We’ll draw five names at random from the list of Hack Chat attendees. Stop by for a chance to win. And, the Adafruit team will be streaming video live during the Hack Chat as well.

You are, of course, encouraged to add your own questions to the discussion. You can do that by leaving a comment on the Python and the Internet of Things Hack Chat and we’ll put that in the queue for the Hack Chat discussion.

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, April 3, at noon, Pacific time. If time zones have got you down, we have a handy time zone converter.

Want a quick peek at what’s possible with CircuitPython? Check out this PyPortal event countdown timer that just happens to be counting down the hours till the next Hack Chat.

MicroPython Learns A New Trick – ISP For AVRs

January 18, 2018 by Inderpreet Singh 12 Comments

One of the reasons why the Arduino became so popular was the ability to program it with ease. It meant the end of big parallel programmers that would cost an arm and a leg. The latest installment of CircuitPython from [Lady Ada] and the team over at Adafruit is a library for programming AVR microcontrollers without a dedicated PC.

For the uninitiated, in-system programming or ISP for AVR controllers employ the SPI bus to write the compiled binary to the flash memory of the controller. The discount on the number of pins used itself is a benefit though getting the timings right was a bit tricky in the good old days. Most dedicated ISPs handle this nicely, though they are normally slaves to a host PC where an ‘upload’ button initiates the process.

With CircuitPython (a derivative of MicroPython), programming microcontrollers does not require going through the code-compile-flash cycle. It can be run on a number of processors, however, AVRs are not among them so this neat little library offers the next best thing. Wire-up an Atmega328P or ATmega2560 to a board like the ESP8266 that does run CircuitPython, and you can write firmware on the fly.

There is a complete tutorial on the subject thanks to [Phillip Torrone] and [Lady Ada] which includes some demo files for testing out the functionality. This opens up a lot of possibilities where OTA firmware updates for an AVR co-processor. We expect to see some keychain AVR programmers in the near future taking a hint from the ESP8266 based Two-Factor Authentication featured previously.

Two Factor Authentication With The ESP8266

January 4, 2018 by Tom Nardi 23 Comments

Google Authenticator is a particularly popular smartphone application that can be used as a token for many two factor authentication (2FA) systems by generating a time-based one time password (referred to as TOTP). With Google Authenticator, the combination of your user name and password along with the single-use code generated by the application allows you to securely authenticate yourself in a way that would be difficult for an attacker to replicate.

That sounds great, but what if you don’t have a smartphone? That’s the situation that [Lady Ada] recently found herself in, and rather than going the easy route and buying a hardware 2FA token that’s compatible with Google Authenticator, she decided to build one herself based on the ESP8266. With the hardware and source documented on her site, the makings of an open source Google Authenticator hardware token are available for anyone who’s interested.

Generated codes can also be viewed via serial.

For the hardware, all you need is the ESP8266 and a display. Naturally [Lady Ada] uses her own particular spin on both devices which you can purchase if you want to create an identical device, but the concept will work the same on the generic hardware you’ve probably already got in the parts bin. Software wise, the code is written in CircuitPython, a derivative of MicroPython, which aims to make microcontroller development easier. If you haven’t tried MicroPython before, grab an ESP and give this a roll.

Conceptually, TOTP is relatively simple. You just need to know what time it is, and run an SHA1 hash. The time part is simple enough, as the ESP8266 can connect to the network and get the current time from NTP. The calculation of the TOTP is handled by the Python code once you’ve provided it with the “secret” pulled from the Google Authenticator application. It’s worth noting here that this means your 2FA secrets will be held in clear-text on the ESP8266’s flash, so try not to use this to secure any nuclear launch systems or anything, OK? Then again, if you ever lose it the beauty of 2-factor is you can invalidate the secret and generate a new one.

We’ve covered the ins and outs of 2FA applications before here at Hackaday if you’d like to know more about the concept, in addition to previous efforts to develop a hardware token for Google Authenticator.

Hackaday Links: May 14, 2017

May 14, 2017 by Brian Benchoff 18 Comments

Maker Faire Bay Area is next weekend, and you know what that means: we’re having a meetup on Saturday night. If you’re in the area, it’s highly recommended you attend. It’s a blinky bring-a-hack with booze. You can’t beat it. I heard the OPShark is showing up. All hail the OPShark. You’re gonna want to RSVP if you’re going k thx.

It only took twelve years, but [ladyada] finally got herself on the cover of Make.

Nvidia has the Jetson, an extremely powerful single board computer + GPU meant for machine learning, imagifying, and robotics applications. If you want to do fancy ML stuff with low power devices, I’d highly recommend you check the Jetson out. Of course, the Jetson is only the brains of any Machine Learning robot; you also need some muscle. To that end, Nvidia released the Isaac robotic simulator. It’s a simulator for standard bits of hardware like quadcopters, hovercrafts (?), robotic arms, and yes, selfie drones. What does this mean? Standardized hardware means someone is going to produce 3rd party hardware, and that’s awesome.

This is just an observation, but fidget spinners are just now hitting the mainstream. We didn’t know what they were for a year ago, and we don’t know now.

A Hebocon is a shitty robot battle. DorkbotPDX just had their first Hebocon and the results were… just about as shitty as you would expect. Since this is a shitty robot battle, a MakerBot made an appearance. This robot, SpitterBot, was designed to blow extruded filament all over its opponent. Did the MakerBot win? Yes, SpitterBot won the ‘Poorest Quality’ award.

Supplyframe, Hackaday’s parent company, hosts monthly-ish electronic get-togethers in the San Fransisco office. The focus of these meetups is to find someone cool who built something awesome and get them to talk about it. The March meetup featured [Pete Bevelacqua] who built a Vector Network Analyzer from scratch. The video is worth a watch.

Friday Hack Chat: CircuitPython With Adafruit Engineers

January 25, 2017 by Mike Szczys 38 Comments

What the heck is CircuitPython? Get that question answered along with many more during this Friday’s Hack Chat. Three engineers from Adafruit join us as [Ladyada], [Tony DiCola], and [Scott Shawcoft] lead a CircuitPython discussion at Noon PST on 1/27/17.

CircuitPython is Adafruit’s new extension on the MicroPython codebase. It adds support for SAMD21 processors in MicroPython and reworks the API for better support across platforms and better documentation. Does this still sound like jibberish? The Python programming language has been extended to microcontrollers. CircuitPython is furthering that work and this Hack Chat is the perfect opportunity to talk with the people who are doing that work. They will also be doing a giveaway of five CircuitPlayground m0 Express boards (brand new, not yet released hardware).

Don’t miss this Hack Chat! Here’s a handy web tool to help convert Friday, January 27 at noon PST to your local time.

Here’s How to Take Part:

join-project-team-message-buttons — Buttons to join the project and enter Hack Chat

Hack Chats are live community events that take place in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. Visit that page (make sure you are logged in) and look for the “Join this Project Button” in the upper right. Once you are part of the project, that button will change to “Team Messaging” which takes you to the Hack Chat.

You don’t have to wait for Friday, join Hack Chat whenever you like and see what the community is currently talking about.