Experimenting With MicroPython On The Bus Pirate 5

October 15, 2024 by Chris Lott 4 Comments

I recently got one of the new RP2040-based Bus Pirate 5 (BP5), a multi-purpose interface debugging and testing tool. Scanning the various such tools in my toolbox already: an Analog Discovery 2, a new Glasgow Interface Explorer, and a couple of pyboards, I realized they all had a Python or MicroPython user interface. A few people on the BP5 forums had tossed around the idea of MicroPython, and it just so happened that I was experimenting with building beta versions of MicroPython for a RP2350 board at the time. Naturally, I started wondering, “just how hard can it be to get MicroPython running on the BP5?”

The Lazy Approach

Rather than duplicating the BP5 firmware functionality, I decided to ignore it completely and go with existing MicroPython capabilities. I planned to just make a simple set of board definition files — perhaps Board Support Package (BSP) is a better term? I’ve done this a dozen times before for development and custom boards. Then write a collection of MicroPython modules to conform to the unique aspects in the BP5 hardware. As user [torwag] over on the Bus Pirate forums said back in March:

Micropython comes already with some modules and enough functions to get some stuff out-of-the-box working. E.g. the infamous version of “hello world” for microcontrollers aka led-blinking.

Continue reading “Experimenting With MicroPython On The Bus Pirate 5” →

Easily Program RP2040 Boards With Your Android Device

October 11, 2024 by Lewin Day 8 Comments

You could write your microcontroller code on your desktop PC, or you could do it on your laptop on the go. Or, if you want to get really portable about things, you could write your embedded code on your phone. Enter DroidScript.

Basically, DroidScript is a JavaScript and Python IDE for Android phones and tablets. Simple enough. You can use it to write apps for your phone or tablet. But its party piece? You can now also use it to program for embedded devices—namely, a range of those based on the RP2040 microcontroller. For example, the Adafruit QT-Py RP2040, the Pimoroni TinyFX, or the Pimoroni Yukon. They run MicroPython and CircuitPython, and you can program them from DroidScript. Easy.

A decade ago, this would have been a royal pain in the butt. But today? It’s easy, because the smartphones and devboards both use USB-C connectors. All you need is a regular USB-C cable and you can hook straight up to the board and burn your code.

You can get the app on the Google Play Store if you’re so inclined. We’ve seen some other neat smartphone programming projects over the years, too. Meanwhile, if you’ve found any other nifty ways to get your code on to a dev board, don’t hesitate to let us know!

Tulip Is A Micropython Synth Workstation, In An ESP32

August 8, 2024 by Elliot Williams 6 Comments

We’re not sure exactly what Tulip is, because it’s so many things all at once. It’s a music-making environment that’s programmable in Python, runs on your big computer or on an ESP32-S3, and comes complete with some nice sounding synth engines, a sequencer, and a drum machine all built in. It’s like your dream late-1980s synthesizer workstation, but running on a dev board that you can get for a song.

And because Tulip is made of open-source software and hardware, you can extend the heck out of it. For instance, as demonstrated in this video by [Floyd Steinberg], you can turn it into a fully contained portable device by adding a touchscreen. That incarnation is available from Makerfabs, and it’s a bargain, especially considering that the developer [Brian Whitman] gets some of the proceeds. Or, because it’s written in portable Python, you can run it on your desktop computer for free.

The most interesting part of Tulip for us, as programmer-musicians, is that it boots up into a Micrypython REPL. This is a synth workstation with a command-line prompt as its primary interface. It has an always-running main loop, and you make music by writing functions that register as callbacks with the main loop. If you were fast, you could probably live-code up something pretty interesting. Or maybe it wants to be extended into a physical musical instrument by taking in triggers from the ESP32’s GPIOs? Oh, and did we mention it sends MIDI out just as happily as it takes it in? What can’t Tulip do?

We’ve seen some pretty neat minimalist music-making devices lately, but in a sense Tulip takes the cake: it’s essentially almost entirely software. The various hardware incarnations are just possibilities, and because it’s all open and extremely portable, you can freely choose among them. We really like the design and sound of the AMY software synthesizer engine that powers the Tulip, and we’re sure that more synthesizer models will be written for it. This is a music project that you want to keep your eyes on in the future.

Embedded Python: MicroPython Toolkits

August 5, 2024 by Arya Voronova 22 Comments

Last time, I talked about how MicroPython is powerful and deserving of a place in your toolkit, and it made for a lively discussion. I’m glad to see that overall, MicroPython has indeed been getting the recognition it deserves – I’ve built a large number of wonderful projects with it, and so have people I’ve shown it to!

Sometimes I see newcomers dissatisfied with MicroPython, because the helper tools they initially pick don’t suit it well. For instance, they try and start out with a regular serial terminal application that doesn’t fit the MicroPython constraints, or a general IDE that requires a fair bit of clicking around every time you need to run your code. In particular, I’d make sure that you know your options no matter whether you prefer GUI or commandline – both have seriously nice tools for MicroPython use!

The main problem to be solved with MicroPython is that you have a single serial port that everything happens through – both file upload and also debugging. For ESP8266/32-based boards, it’s a physical serial port, and for chips like RP2040 and ESP32-S* where a hardware USB peripheral is available, it’s a virtual one – which makes things harder because the virtual port might get re-enumerated every now and then, possibly surprising your terminal application. If you want to upload a program of yours, you need to free up the serial port, and to see the program’s output, you will need to reopen that port immediately after – not a convenient thing to do if you’re using something like PuTTy.

So, using MicroPython-friendly software is a must for a comfortable hacking experience. What are your options? Continue reading “Embedded Python: MicroPython Toolkits” →

Embedded Python: MicroPython Is Amazing

July 11, 2024 by Arya Voronova 105 Comments

In case you haven’t heard, about a month ago MicroPython has celebrated its 11th birthday. I was lucky that I was able to start hacking with it soon after pyboards have shipped – the first tech talk I remember giving was about MicroPython, and that talk was how I got into the hackerspace I subsequently spent years in. Since then, MicroPython been a staple in my projects, workshops, and hacking forays.

If you’re friends with Python or you’re willing to learn, you might just enjoy it a lot too. What’s more, MicroPython is an invaluable addition to a hacker’s toolkit, and I’d like to show you why. Continue reading “Embedded Python: MicroPython Is Amazing” →

Illustrated Kristina with an IBM Model M keyboard floating between her hands.

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Tasty Snacks Board

July 2, 2024 by Kristina Panos 5 Comments

A pocket cyberdeck-looking thing with a screen and a thumb keyboard. — Image by [MakerM0] via Hackaday.IO

[MakerM0]’s LangCard is an entry into our 2024 Business Card Challenge that just so happens to fit the Keebin’ bill as well.

You might label this a pocket cyberdeck, and that’s just fine with me. The idea here is to have a full-keyboard development board for learning programming languages like CircuitPython, MicroPython, C++, and so on, wherever [MakerM0] happens to be at a given moment.

Open up the LangCard and you’ll find an RP2040 and a slim LiPo battery. I’m not sure what display that is, but there are probably a few that would work just fine were you to make one of these fun learning devices for yourself.

Continue reading “Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Tasty Snacks Board” →

A screenshot of the release page, showing the headline and a crop of the release notes

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!