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MicroPython 1.23 Brings Custom USB Devices, OpenAMP, Much More

June 2, 2024 by Arya Voronova 25 Comments

MicroPython is a wonderful Python interpreter that runs on many higher-end microcontrollers, from ESP8266 to STM32 to the RP2040. MicroPython lets you build devices quickly, and its latest release, 1.23, brings a number of improvements you should be aware of.

The first one is custom USB device support, and it’s a big one. Do you want to build HID devices, or play with MIDI, or do multiple serial streams with help of PIO? Now MicroPython lets you easily create USB devices on a variety of levels, from friendly wrappers for creating HID or MIDI devices, to low-level hooks to let you define your own USB descriptors, with user-friendly libraries to help all the way through. Currently, SAMD and RP2040 ports are supported in this part of code, but you can expect more in the future.

There’s more – support for OpenAMP, an inter-core communication protocol, has received a ton of improvements for systems where MicroPython reigns supreme on some of the CPU cores but also communicates with different systems on other cores. A number of improvements have made their way through the codebase, highlighting things we didn’t know MicroPython could do – for instance, did you know that there’s a WebAssembly port in the interpreter, letting you run MicroPython in your browser?

Well, it’s got a significant overhaul in this release, so there’s no better time to check it out than now! Library structure has been refactored to improve CPython compatibility, the RP2040 port receives a 10% performance boost thanks to core improvements, and touches upon areas like PIO and SPI interfaces.

We applaud all contributors involved on this release. MicroPython is now a decade old as of May 3rd, and it keeps trucking on, having firmly earned its place in the hacker ecosystem. If you’ve been playing with MicroPython, remember that there are multiple IDEs, graphics libraries, and you can bring your C code with you!

These Five Hackaday.io Members Just Won Fancy New CircuitPython Boards

January 28, 2017 by Brian Benchoff 9 Comments

Just a few hours ago, we had a HackChat over on Hackaday.io with Adafruit discussing CircuitPython, their new extension to the MicroPython codebase. During the chat, the folks at Adafruit took questions and asked participants in the chat what they’d like to build with some cool new hardware. These CircuitPlayground M0 Express boards are brand new, unreleased hardware. Really cool stuff.

The winners of these unreleased boards, and the projects they’ll be using them for are: [RaidDude8] for a light painting system, [gelatinousslime] for a ‘magic wand’ for his daughter that reacts to gestures, [Neon22] for a multiuser game using Neopixels, [turbinenreiter] for a gravity demonstrator using Neopixels and the accelerometer, and [todbot] for a Powermate knob USB HID clone.

During the chat, The folks at Adafruit talked about their additions to MicroPython. It’s a rework of the API, provides better support for more platforms, and extends the entire thing to microcontrollers. If you like Python and want to get into microcontrollers, this one is for you.

If you missed the chat, you can still check out Adafruit’s live stream right here, or the transcript right here. Below, you can check out Lady Ada awarding the new boards after the break.

We have a few more HackChats coming up in the next few weeks, one with [Sprite_TM], inevitably discussing why he won’t do a crowdfunding campaign for his tiny, tiny Game Boy, an RF talk with [Jenny List], and a chat with Sparkfun. You can check out the upcoming HackChats here. Want to get in on the action? Request to join the HackChat and you’re in.

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