Software Driving Hardware

June 3, 2023 by Elliot Williams 69 Comments

We were talking about [Christopher Barnatt]’s very insightful analysis of what the future holds for the Raspberry Pi single board computers on the Podcast. On the one hand, they’re becoming such competent computers that they are beginning to compete with lightweight desktop machines, instead of just being a hacker curiosity.

On the other hand, especially given the shortage and the increase in price that has come with the Pi’s expanding memory endowments, a lot of people who would “just throw in a Raspberry Pi” are starting to think more carefully about their options. Five years ago, this would have meant looking into what you could whip together on an Arduino-based platform, either on actual Arduino hardware or on an ESP8266 or similar, but that’s a very different beast from a programmer’s perspective. Working with microcontrollers used to be very different from working with even the smallest Linux machines.

These days, there is no shortage of microcontrollers that have enough memory – both flash and RAM – to support a higher-level environment like MicroPython. And if you think about it, MicroPython brings to the microcontrollers a lot of what people were using a Raspberry Pi for in projects anyway: a friendly interactive programming environment that was free of the compile-here, flash-there debug cycle. If you’re happy coding Python on a single-board Linux computer, you’ll be more or less happy coding in MicroPython or Circuit Python on a microcontroller.

And what this leaves us with, as hackers, is a fantastic spectrum of choices. Where before there was a hard edge between programming C on an 8-bit PIC or an AVR and working with something that had a full Linux operating system like a Pi, it’s all blurry now. And as the Pis, the Jetson, and all the other Linux SBCs are blurring the boundary with more traditional computers as they all become more competent and gain more computer-like peripherals. Nowadays your choice is much freer, and the hardware landscape more fluid. You don’t have to let software development concerns drive your hardware choices, and we think that’s a great thing.

Let Machine Learning Code An Infinite Variety Of Pong Games

February 21, 2023 by Dan Maloney 7 Comments

In a very real way, Pong started the video game revolution. You wouldn’t have thought so at the time, with its simple gameplay, rudimentary controls, some very low-end sounds, and a cannibalized TV for a display, but the legendarily stuffed coinboxes tell the tale. Fast forward 50 years or so, and Pong has been largely reduced to a programmer’s exercise to see how few lines of code can stand in for what [Ted Dabney] and [Allan Alcorn] accomplished. But now even that’s too much, as OpenAI Codex can generate a playable Pong from just a few prompts, at least most of the time. Continue reading “Let Machine Learning Code An Infinite Variety Of Pong Games” →

MicroPython ESP32 IDE Makes Life Simpler

February 7, 2023 by Al Williams 49 Comments

In theory, using MicroPython on the ESP32 is easy — just flash an image and connect using a serial port. But that leaves a lot of things you still have to do. You need to move files between the two platforms. You’ll want to manage network configurations. You might want better editing and assistance, too. So there are a number of IDEs made to help you and one we recently noticed was MPY-Jama.

The IDE provides source code editing, of course. But it also allows you to do things like pull information about the network using a dashboard or connect to a WiFi network easily. You can even create your own AP with a simple interface.

Although the front part of the README mentions it is for Windows or Mac, if you scroll down you’ll find instructions for installing under Linux. The IDE is extensible using “Jama Funcs” and can handle the flashing operation from inside the IDE.

Of course, there is an IDE from Arduino (but not the Arduino IDE) that handles MicroPython. You can also find a rundown of several similar alternatives online. If you need some inspiration for a MicroPython project, perhaps you’d like to play a game?

GitHub ESP32 OTA Updates, Now In MicroPython Flavor

December 23, 2022 by Elliot Williams 5 Comments

Wouldn’t it be great if you could keep all of your small Internet-connected hacks up to date with a single codebase? A couple of weeks ago, we wrote up a project that automagically pulls down OTA updates to an ESP32 from GitHub, using the ESP32 C SDK. [Pascal] asked in the comments, “but what about MicroPython?” Gauntlet thrown, [TURFPTAx] wrote ugit.py – a simple library that mirrors all of the code from a public GitHub Python repo straight to your gizmo running Micropython.

[Damped] wrote in about Senko, another library that does something very similar, but by then [TURFPTAx] was already done. Bam! Part of the speed is that MicroPython includes everything you need to get the job done – parsing streamed JSON was the hard part with the original hack. MicroPython makes those sorts of things easy.

This is one of those ideas that’s just brilliant for a hacker with a small flock of independent devices to herd. And because ugit.py itself is fairly simple and readable, if you need to customize it to do your own bidding, that’s no problem either. Just be sure that when you’re storing your WiFi authentication info, it’s not publicly displayed. ([TURFPTAx], could I log into your home WiFi?)

What’s [TURFPTAx] going to be using this for? We’re guessing it’s going to be deploying code to his awesome Open Muscle sensing rigs. What will we be using it for? Blinky Christmas decorations for the in-laws, now remotely updatable without them having to even learn what a “repo” is.

Continue reading “GitHub ESP32 OTA Updates, Now In MicroPython Flavor” →

BBC Micro:Bit As Handheld Synthesizer

December 17, 2022 by Bryan Cockfield 4 Comments

The BBC Micro:bit, while not quite as popular in our community as other microcontroller development boards, has a few quirks that can make it a much more interesting piece of hardware to build a project around than an Arduino. [Turi] took note of these unique features and decided that it was the perfect platform to build a synthesizer on.

The Micro:bit includes two important elements that make this project work: the LED matrix and a gyro sensor. [Turi] built a 5×5 button matrix for inputs and paired each to one of the diodes, which eliminates the problem of false inputs. The gyro sensor is used for detuning, which varies the pitch of any generated sound by a set amount according to the orientation of the device. It also includes a passive low-pass filter to make the sound more pleasant to the ear, especially for younger players of the machine. He’s released the source code on his GitHub page for anyone interested in recreating it.

While this was a one-off project for [Turi], he notes that using MicroPython to program it instead of C led to a lot of unnecessary complications, and the greater control allowed by C would enable some extra features with less hassle. Still, it’s a fun project that really showcases the unique features of this board, much like this tiny Sumo robot we covered over the summer.

Continue reading “BBC Micro:Bit As Handheld Synthesizer” →

Pi Pico QR Display Hands Out WiFi Info With Style

December 8, 2022 by Tom Nardi 3 Comments

At this point, you’re likely aware that you can store your wireless network’s credentials in a QR code, so that anyone who wants to connect with their smartphone need only scan the 2D barcode. Whether you print it out on paper, extrude it out of plastic, or paint the thing on the wall, it still works the same. It’s a neat trick for when you’ve got friends and family over, and saves you having to explain your ponderously long WPA key.

But what if you want to change up the encryption key every so often? Sure would be a hassle to have to repaint the wall. Enter this interesting project from [Predrag Mijatovic], which uses a few scripts to automatically set up a new encrypted guest WiFi network and present the appropriate QR code on an OLED display attached to a Raspberry Pi Pico. It’s a bit convoluted, and almost certainly won’t work on your network without significant tweaks, but we’re intrigued by the idea.

As [Predrag] explains, the whole thing is based on a Latvian MikroTik router that can be configured over SSH. A Bash script generates a new encryption key by base64 encoding the output /dev/urandom, logs into the router to set up a new network using it, and then generates the matching ASCII QR code. With some sed trickery, the code is then embedded into a MicroPython program that gets uploaded to the connected Pi Pico.

In the video after the break [Predrag] takes us through the process manually so it’s easier to see what’s going on. Under normal circumstances, it would all happen automatically and would take just a few seconds to complete. We’d feel more comfortable if the scripts had some error correction that would allow them to gracefully exit if something goes wrong, but as a proof of concept, it certainly works.

We’d like to see this concept explored a bit further, perhaps using one of the physical QR code displays we’ve seen over the years. A programmable electronic paper display would also be a logical way to show off a dynamic QR code.

Continue reading “Pi Pico QR Display Hands Out WiFi Info With Style” →

Screenshot of the Arduino Lab for MicroPython

Arduino Brings A MicroPython IDE

November 14, 2022 by Arya Voronova 52 Comments

Both Arduino and MicroPython are giants when it comes to the electronics education area, and each one of them represents something you can’t pass up on as an educator. Arduino offers you a broad ecosystem of cheap hardware with a beginner-friendly IDE, helped by forum posts explaining every single problem that you could and will stumble upon. MicroPython, on the other hand, offers a powerful programming environment ripe for experimentation, and doesn’t unleash a machine gun fire of triangle brackets if you try to parse JSON slightly incorrectly. They look like a match made in heaven, and today, from heaven descends the Arduino Lab for MicroPython.

This is not an Arduino IDE extension – it’s a separate Arduino IDE-shaped app that does MicroPython editing and uploads code to your board from a friendly environment. It works over a serial port, and as such, the venerable ESP8266-based boards shouldn’t be be left out – it even offers file manager capabilities! Arduino states that this is an experimental effort – it doesn’t yet have syntax checks, for instance, and no promises are made. That said, it already is a wonderful MicroPython IDE for beginner purposes, and absolutely a move in the right direction. Want to try? Download it here, there’s even a Linux build!

High-level languages let you build projects faster – perfect fit for someone getting into microcontrollers. Hopefully, what follows is a MicroPython library manager and repository! We’ve first tried out MicroPython in 2016, and it’s come a long way since then – we’ve seen quite a few beginner-friendly MicroPython intros, from a gaming handheld programming course, to a bipedal robot programming MicroPython exploration. And, of course, you can bring your C libraries with you.