Videos from EuroPython 2019 are up on YouTube! Brad Miro from Google gave a talk about “Deep Learning with TensorFlow 2.0“. The talk walks through TensorFlow use cases at Google, changes in TensorFlow 2.0, examples with the new API and tips for getting started. Check out the details below:

TensorFlow at Google – TensorFlow was released in 2015 as an open-source project and is used worldwide with 2,000+ contributors. Google is using TF for optimizing data centers, for AR directions with Google Maps and to identify planets in distant solar systems. If you’d like to learn more about TensorFlow projects at Google take a look at Jeff Dean’s I/O talk or Adafruit’s post on diabetic retinopathy.

2.0 features – This release addresses some of the shortcomings of TensorFlow that did not feel pythonic (Miro specifically points out ‘session.run’). Session.run was replaced with eager execution and Keras was adopted as the high-level API. Overall, the API was simplified moving towards ‘one way to do everything’. TensorFlow 2.0 aims to be easy, powerful, scalable and deployable anywhere — Including on edge devices and in the browser with TensorFlow Lite and TensorFlow.js using saved models.

TensorFlow 2.0 focuses on simplicity and ease of use, featuring updates like:

• Easy model building with Keras and eager execution.
• Robust model deployment in production on any platform.
• Powerful experimentation for research.
• API simplification by reducing duplication and removing deprecated endpoints.

Miro also hits on a number of TensorFlow resources such as TensorFlow Hub which is a place to “store and download pre-built models”, a bit like GitHub for models. TensorFlow also has datasets for testing out your TensorFlow models.

Upgrading? you can use tf.upgrade to convert your TensorFlow code to TensorFlow 2.0 code. Also, check out the upgrade and migration guides and/or the TensorFlow tutorials.

Getting Started with TensorFlow? Miro suggests a number of TensorFlow courses on coursera, udacity, and deeplearing.ai.

Hauntingly effective design from JJSmooth44 on imgur, via boredpanda:

idea credit to Yoshiyuki Mikami. I automated his art concept by scraping the animal planet endangered animals list.

Read more and see more on GitHub

The Python on Microcontrollers newsletter – your source for Python information every week – subscriptions open

The word is out that our newsletter is the place for the hottest news involving Python on hardware. 6,600+ readers and growing!

Catch all the weekly news on Python for Microcontrollers with adafruitdaily.com. This ad-free, spam-free weekly email is filled with the Python information that you may have missed, all in one place!

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Save time hunting for the breaking news, we’ve got it all.

Including news on the Circuit Playground Bluefruit, boards to make Halloween fun and much, much more!

Via EE Times, it’s worth noting that there have been recent shifts in the popularity of certain programming languages that could give us clues about where the digital world is headed, and also remind us of how far we’ve come.

Python ranks #1
IEEE Spectrum released its annual ranking of program languages last month and many were surprised to see Python maintained its top spot. Python, a script-based language, has held the top spot in IEEE Spectrum’s ranking since 2017.

Rankings from 10 years ago
In 2010, the TIOBE Programming Index ranked the top 10 languages in order as follows: Java, C, C++, PHP, (Visual) Basic, C#, Python, Objective-C, Perl, and Ruby.

For some languages, such as Ruby and Ruby on Rails, runtime speed and boot speed just aren’t fast enough to support a full-scale commercial product. For other languages, like PHP, poor security was a huge factor that kept companies such as Facebook from continuing to utilize the language.

Other factors: mobile devices, wearables
There are a few other factors that could have impacted the popularity of programming languages. The inherent security of the language is one factor. Another is the increase in popularity of mobile devices.

Read the entire article here.

We’ve updated the Introducing Adafruit Trellis guide to include CircuitPython and Python usage. The new CircuitPython and Python section shows you how to wire the Trellis up to a Feather M4 Express and a Raspberry Pi, and walks through the basics of controlling LEDs and reading button presses. A full code example is also included that turns the LEDs on and off in different ways and then reads button presses and turns on the associated LED when the button is pressed.

Check out the updated Introducing Adafruit Trellis guide!

ICYMI (In case you missed it) – Tuesday’s Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter from AdafruitDaily.com went out – if you missed it, subscribe now!

The next newsletter goes out in a week and being subscribed the best way to keep up with all things Python for hardware.

Over 6,670 subscribers worldwide!

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

Ada Lovelace Day (ALD) is October 8, 2019, it is an international celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). It aims to increase the profile of women in STEM and, in doing so, create new role models who will encourage more girls into STEM careers and support women already working in STEM – findingada.com.

Thank you Mitsuharu Aoyama, CircuitPython book is out!

The CircuitPython and Mu for beginners book with Circuit Playground Express in Japanese is out, and the author sent us these wonderful gifts, thank you!

Lessons learned from building a custom CircuitPython board

From Thea Flowers @theavalkyrie … Plug this in to your computer to send MIDI and it also shows the code, made with CircuitPython – Twitter and post about “Lessons learned from building a custom CircuitPython board.”

Serpente slithers around the web…

CircuitPython slithers onto a new board, but this board looks a bit familiar! – bigl.es

CircuitPython snakes its way to Python

Blinka and Ralph – Twitter. CircuitPython snakes its way to Python, these headlines are writing themselves.

1,000 Thanks! Adafruit AR app featuring CircuitPython boards

We’ve hit over 1,000 downloads with our Adafruit AR app! We have over 1,000 downloads for our Adafruit AR app! HUZZAH! Now we’d like to give YOU 1,000 thank you’s for downloading the app. If you haven’t already, what’s stopping you. Be sure to download the Adafruit AR app only available on iOS mobile devices. Meet your virtual engineering assistant, Adabot, right on your desktop. Also view interactive overlays on real-life and much more! The Adafruit AR app is always evolving. Check out what we have coming up! – Youtube.

10 Years of Programming Language Evolution, Python #1 spot

A bit of repost, but now with some more info and some Python on hardware…

“IEEE Spectrum released its annual ranking of program languages last month and many were surprised to see Python maintained its top spot. Python, a script-based language, has held the top spot in IEEE Spectrum’s ranking since 2017. That’s not the surprise. IEEE scores the languages using a weighted scale. Last year, Python had a score of 100, while C++ scored 99.7, Java scored 97.5, and C scored 96.7. This year, however, the landscape of languages changed. Python maintained its top spot with a score of 100, but Java came in second with a score of 96.3 — quite a fall. C came in third with 94.4, C++ slid all the way into fourth place with a score of 87.5, and statistical programming language R took the fifth spot with a score of 81.5. Spots 6-10 were taken by JavaScript, C#, MATLAB, Swift, and Google’s Go, in that order…. Python, Java, JavaScript, and C are versatile languages that keep them widely used. Speaking specifically to Python, there are many specialized libraries that support machine learning, deep learning (Theano), AI, and maker libraries for microcontrollers and tiny computers like Adafruit…“

EuroPython 2019 videos posted

From the EuroPython 2019 Team – in total, there are now 133 videos available for you to watch. All EuroPython videos, including the ones from previous conferences, are available on the EuroPython YouTube Channel.

Talks include: Radomir Dopieralski – Game Development with CircuitPython, Nicholas Tollervey – Tools of the Trade: The Making of a Code Editor, Florian Wahl – Building logistics applications with MicroPython and ESP32 MCUs, and Ben Nuttall – Astro Pi: Python on the International Space Station.

Feather takes flight with the Wio Lite RISC-V (GD32VF103) ESP8266 at Seeed Studio

Feather taking flight at Seeed!

“Wio Lite W600 WiFi and Wio Lite MG126 Bluetooth, now the third brother of Wio Lite family is coming – Wio Lite RISC-V. Wio Lite RISC-V is a Feather form factor RISC-V development board Based on GD32VF103, with the onboard ESP8266 Wio Core, it also features WiFi function. GD32VF103CBT6 is a Bumblebee core based on Nuclei System Technology. Support RV32IMAC instruction set and ECLIC fast interrupt function. Core power consumption is only 1/3 of that of traditional Cortex-M3. Onboard ESP8266 WiFi core and Lipo charging circuit make it a perfect IoT control board. There is also a micro SD slot at the backside of this board, which can expand system resources. Meanwhile, as a Wio Lite Board, Wio Lite RISC-V definitely can work with the Grove Shield for Wio Lite. With this shield, over 200 Grove sensors, actuators and displays are all yours. For instance, you can choose whatever grove OLED you like to make it a visual development board.”

Manufacturing Day 2019

Manufacturing Day 2019 was Oct 4th, 2019. Here are our posts, and here are the tagged Tweets #MFGDay19 that came in all day. Earlier we posted about some the national and internal trends along with how we’re doing so far.

In the maker / electronics world, we’ve heard from friends and through the usual gossip some companies are down as much as 50% year over year to flat (same), to maybe 10% or so over last year. For Adafruit in September 2019 we ended up up +22.2% YoY, and up +3.1% more orders than last year at the same time. Another data point we wanted to add here: ADABOX is over 4,000 subscribers, 1/3 of the original subscriber base has gotten every single one, over 172 have all 13 boxes out of the current 4k+ subs.

We’re 100% focused on getting new open-source hardware out, publishing open-source code, guides, videos, community efforts, and keeping popular items in stock and preparing for what may be an excellent holiday season. Thank you so much Adafruit team members, our community, our partners, and customers for being part of this adventure together with us. We remain VC-free, loan-free, open-source, woman-owned, and manufacturing in the USA. There will be challenges ahead for sure, we’re looking forward to navigating them together.

Amanda “w0z” Wozniak on Embedded.fm

Humans Have a Terrible Spec Sheet – Amanda “w0z” Wozniak was on the Embedded.fm and spoke about her career through biomedical engineering and startups. Pictured here, all of us in “apartment Adafruit” in 2010….

“Amanda “w0z” Wozniak (@kainzowa) spoke with us about her career through biomedical engineering and startups. Amanda contributed a chapter to Building Open Source Hardware: DIY Manufacturing. (A book we spoke with Alicia Gibb about in #289.) Amanda’s chapter was titled Design Process: How to Get from Nothing to Something. For more information about the companies we discussed, check out Amanda’s LinkedIn page.”

Read more, and listen!

• Embedded.fm – RSS.
• Embedded.fm – iTunes.
• Embedded.fm – Spotify.
• Embedded.fm – libsyn.

Open-source hardware month is here!

October is open-source hardware month! Every single day in October, we’ll be posting up open-source stories from the last decade (and more!) about open-source hardware, open-source software, and beyond!

CircuitPython itself, in addition to all the CircuitPython boards, are open-source software and hardware.

Here are a few stories so far!

Open hardware summit – Limor “Ladyada” Fried keynote 2010 – Youtube.

What is the Open-Source Hardware Definition? – OSHWA.org

Teuthis Open Source MP3 Player 2001 – Daisy by Raphael Abrams – Adafruit.

Open Source Hardware Certifications and more! – Adafruit.

What is open source REALLY? It’s a wine from New Jersey – Adafruit.

Have an open-source hardware (or software) success story? A person, company, or project to celebrate? An open-source challenge? Email opensource@adafruit.com, we’ll be looking for and using the tag #OHM2019 online as well! Check out all the events going on here! Follow along all month long.

News from around the web!

Baby Groot sounds better with a Stemma Speaker added to its CPX. This simple project can be adapted to make anything conductive (plants, pumpkins) play sounds when touched, all with CircuitPython – Twitter & GitHub.

The string car is SO CLOSE! Board defs are done, PCB fixes in-place, all tests have passed – Twitter.

Emmy in the Key of Code is a light up CircuitPython sign – Instagram & Twitter.

This is a cute Circuit Playground Express-based tomato friend – Twitter.

Look what came in the mail! Bryan’s first OSH Park After Dark board. It’s a keypad which uses CircuitPython – Twitter.

Day of the Dead photo frame – Adafruit Forums.

This CircuitPython tutorial demonstrates how to build a battery powered Bluetooth BLE remote control to operate a BLE peripheral hosting a solenoid and a spectrally selective light detector, guide and YouTube.

Amie DD made a video of how she made a fog smoke armor for her Ursula pauldrons using a Gemma M0 and CircuitPython – Twitter.

Code for the solder-free MakerSnack Python Smart Tie. This is coded in CircuitPython and powered by a Circuit Playground Express Bluefruit – pastebin, and YouTube.

Maker Update: Glass Eye for the Spooky Guy [Maker Update #143] – YouTube.

Make Something Cool: Turning Poundland into tech, micro:bit lesson slides from Les – Google Docs.

Looks like this Feather Bluefruit beanie will spin when code is committed – Twitter.

Hallowing M4 capacitive touch fang control + new behavior: rainbow – Twitter.

Connect a speaker and play football with a Circuit Playground Express, powered by CircuitPython – GitHub.

CircuitPython SOM from Kevin, OSH Park and GitHub.

Here is a sneak peak of a controller Nina is building for a CircuitPython LED jacket. The OLED display will show the active pattern and three tiny buttons will let you switch between patterns & toggle brightness. Uses an Adafruit Feather M4, a OLED FeatherWing, and a 2000mAh LiPo battery – Twitter.

Mfletcherchristian made his Dad a Mike Wazowski for an upcoming birthday – Twitter.

Cute bot made with CPX – Twitter.

The Monster M4sk eyeball box is watching you – Twitter.

Unleash your smart-home devices: Vacuum Cleaning Robot Hacking – why is my vacuum as powerful as my smartphone? Overview, and GitHub.

GridEYE plus Monster M4SK, heat seeking eye movement – Forum posts and guide.

Dark Crystal Fizzgig from Erin – Twitter.

From Allie, it is that time again!!! Full “maker challenge” rules on Instagram @hackapumpkinchallenge or in the YouTube description. Prizes sponsored by Digi-Key – Twitter.

nRF Connect for iOS: What is a Bug-fix Release – Nordic.

PDF of the talk Guido van Rossum gave about MyPy at Dropbox – PDF.

Picolibc Version 1.0 Released. PicoLibc is library offering standard C library APIs that targets small embedded systems with limited RAM. PicoLibc was formed by blending code from Newlib and AVR Libc – GitHub.

“AngelFace – Find Angels & VCs with Face Recognition” – Product Hunt newsletter.

MicroPython on the Adafruit Feather STM32F405 – GitHub.

IP lookup from favicon using Shodan – GitHub.

Atmel SAM dev/platform 3.9.0 is out, includes some more Adafruit boards – platform.io

PROTOTYPE: Bus Pirate/Logic Analyzer with Ice40 FPGA – Dangerous Prototypes.

A generative clip-on cover for the CARD10 badge, modeled in OpenSCAD – GitHub.

Python 3.7.5rc1 is the release candidate preview of the fifth maintenance release of Python 3.7. The Python 3.7 series is the latest major release of the Python language and contains many new features and optimizations – Python.org

Using small TFT LCD displays with Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone and other Linux boards? Ever wonder how that works? Then watch the Outreachy Internship Report by Meghana Madhyastha at xdc2019 on refactoring backlight and SPI helpers in tinydrm – Youtube, via Twitter.

Scraping Wikipedia content with 10 lines of code by Ankit – GitHub.

Runway and wirelessly using the Feather Huzzah board using a potentiometer to navigate BigGAN’s latent space – GitHub via Twitter.

That Music You’re Dancing To? It’s Code. Collectives in cities around the world are bringing computer languages to the club – NY Times.

ESPboy: Games, IoT, STEM for education and fun.

Specifications: ESP8266, 80/160Mhz, 4/8Mb, WiFi, LCD 128×128 display, RGB LED, HQ speaker, 8 buttons, 600mAh battery, 30x70x15mm – Hackaday.io

mutantC-Handheld – mutantc.gitlab.io

Congrats to the MicroPython folks involved in getting cross-port low-level BLE support merged to mainline! Currently targets nRF5x, ESP32 and STM32 – GitHub via Matt.

Tweets and more from micro:bit LIVE! – Twitter.

On Tuesday, October 8th, for the very first time ever, the new issue of 2600 will be released digitally in non-DRM PDF format – 2600.

“I think everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer and learn a computer language. Because it teaches you how to think. I view computer science as a liberal art. It should be something that everybody learns.” Steve Jobs, 1955-2011 via Twitter.

How to Make a Simple Spiderbot for Halloween – Instructables, and YouTube.

The latest from adafruit.io – Adafruit IoT Monthly: The S in IoT is for Security, Amazon announces Sidewalk and more! – adafruit.io

Balloon IoT Environmental Sensing Takes to the Air – Rob Faludi.

Chip manufacturers are starting to mix their sensors with ML to get gesture recognition and motion tracking – Adafruit.

TTN-Mapper-GPS – git.unixweb.net/jhummel/TTN-Mapper-GPS

“US manufacturing activity drops to 10-year low” – Adafruit.

QWIIC / STEMMA / STEMMA QT added to Pimoroni EAGLE – GitHub.

TensorFlow 2.0.0 is here – GitHub.

TensorFlow 2.0 Tutorial 01: Basic Image Classification – Lambda.

First part of a TensorFlow Lite object detection guide, it gives step-by-step instructions on how to train, convert, and run a TF Lite model – GitHub.

Logo Recognition iOS Application Using Machine Learning and Flask API. Comparing 5 popular neural net architectures on iOS: VGG16, ResNet50, InceptionV3, GoogleNet, and SqueezeNet using PyTorch – heartbeat.

More Supercon Talks – Taking The Hardware World By Storm – Hackaday. YAY, SOPHY!

Interview: Josef Prusa on makers, breaking records and avoiding 3D printing hype – TCT Magazine.

He says 130,000 printers have been sold and about 6,000 a month are being manufactured now.

Embedded PCs: scalable designs for casino gaming – Embedded computing design. Always wondered about the hardware in all these…

Hackster News – Hackster.io has a new section devoted to news. Here is the ATOM feed and they have a survey to fill out, so tell them the type of news you want to see there. This is good, there is a lot of news in the electronics / maker world that can use some help getting the spotlight put on it, getting good voices amplified.

MyPyBuilder is a Drag-and-Drop GUI builder that wraps the tkinter library – GitHub.

Here is a $4 WalMart Halloween decoration with an added HalloWing M0 Express – Twitter.

RISC-V: Too Open to Succeed by Brandon Lewis – Embdeed Design. Oh c’mon, it’s too early to say it’s too open to do well.

Unsung Beauty of Analog Devices Datasheets – neil.computer

TinyML meetups are HAPPENING, there were two Meetups on September 26, one in the Bay Area, the other in Austin, TX. Links to the slides, and a video link for the Bay Area meeting – tinymlsummit.org

Good feature for all devices, maybe. The $1,950.00 MARQ Premium GPS Smartwatch by GARMIN has a kill switch that deletes all data.

A greeting cards company forces Banksy to open a homeware store to keep its trademark? – Adafruit. The Banksy quote sounds like running an open-source hardware company. See our previous coverage about the MicroPython trademark in China.

“I still encourage anyone to copy, borrow, steal and amend my art for amusement, academic research or activism. I just don’t want them to get sole custody of my name.”

Genuino getting removed from naming in Arduino – GitHub.

This is a ‘first light’ image from my ‘new’, third-hand microfocus X-Ray unit – Flickr.

Glasgow Interface Explorer. A highly capable and extremely flexible open source multitool for digital electronics – Crowd Supply & GitHub.

These retro designer electronics items for sale by robertom60 on eBay are gorgeous – Adafruit.

Multi-line comments have arrived! You can now highlight multiple lines in a pull request diff and add a comment, all at once – GitHub.

New workflow editor for GitHub Actions – GitHub.

NXP Launches the GHz Microcontroller Era – NXP.

“NXP will demonstrate the new record CoreMark performance of the i.MX RT1170 MCU and showcase the recently launched i.MX RT1010 family at Arm TechCon 2019 in NXP’s booth #731. The i.MX RT1010 MCU family is a low-cost, high-performance crossover MCU priced at sub-$1 (USD). In addition, starting on 10/10/19, the MIMXRT1010-EVK will be available at a promotional price of $10.10 – for a limited time only.” …RT1010 is 80 lqfp, 500mhz and 128k ram.

We support the PSF by donating to help fund workshops, conferences and pay meetup fees. The PSF couldn’t do its work without this kind of financial support. Consider donating monthly. Join us in supporting the PSF by donating.

#ICYDNCI What was the most popular, most clicked link, in last week’s newsletter? CircuitPython Libraries on any Computer with FT232H: Powerful computers can now use the power of CircuitPython libraries..

PyDev of the Week: Paul Ivanov – Mouse vs Python.

CircuitPython Weekly Meeting for October 7th, 2019 on YouTube.

Coming soon

Testing Circuit Playground Bluefruit image transfer – we are trying out latest TestFlight of the Bluefruit Connect app – we’ve added a tool to transfer images from your phone or tablet. I can send an image from my photo roll or even take a lovely selfie to transmit. We did a lot of work to get images transferring at a nice speed. We’ll release this soon so people can try it out with the TFT Gizmo + Circuit Playground bluefruit – YouTube.

BrainCraft rev EDGE BADGE.

E-Ink Feather Friend, ThinkInk.

E-Ink Feather Friend, ThinkInk.

2.13” E-Ink, ThinkInk.

Back of the STM Feather.

E-Ink ThinkInk Gizmo.

STEMMA Relay!

New Learn Guides!

Make a horrific-yet-delicious Meat Skull Centerpiece for your next Halloween party! The MONSTER M4SK is our all-in-one, dual-display animated eyeball animation kit that you can easily use to bring this tasty decapitated head to life! The lenses and lens holders make those peepers really pop from their fleshy sockets – learn.adafruit.com

Adafruit Circuit Playground TFT Gizmo from Melissa LeBlanc-Williams

Adafruit STEMMA Speaker from Kattni

Updated Guides – Now With More Python!

You can use CircuitPython libraries on Raspberry Pi! We’re updating all of our CircuitPython guides to show how to wire up sensors to your Raspberry Pi, and load the necessary CircuitPython libraries to get going using them with Python. We’ll be including the updates here so you can easily keep track of which sensors are ready to go. Check it out!

Keep checking back for more updated guides!

CircuitPython Libraries!

CircuitPython support for hardware continues to grow. We are adding support for new sensors and breakouts all the time, as well as improving on the drivers we already have. As we add more libraries and update current ones, you can keep up with all the changes right here!

For the latest drivers, download the Adafruit CircuitPython Library Bundle.

If you’d like to contribute, CircuitPython libraries are a great place to start. Have an idea for a new driver? File an issue on CircuitPython! Interested in helping with current libraries? Check out this GitHub issue on CircuitPython for an overview of the State of the CircuitPython Libraries, updated each week. We’ve included open issues from the library issue lists, and details about repo-level issues that need to be addressed. We have a guide on contributing to CircuitPython with Git and Github if you need help getting started. You can also find us in the #circuitpython channel on the Adafruit Discord. Feel free to contact Kattni (@kattni) with any questions.

You can check out this list of all the CircuitPython libraries and drivers available.

The current number of CircuitPython libraries is 187!

Updated Libraries!

Here’s this week’s updated CircuitPython libraries:

• Adafruit_CircuitPython_SSD1306
• Adafruit_CircuitPython_ST7789
• Adafruit_CircuitPython_PyPortal
• Adafruit_CircuitPython_MPRLS

PyPI Download Stats!

We’ve written a special library called Adafruit Blinka that makes it possible to use CircuitPython Libraries on Raspberry Pi and other compatible single-board computers. Adafruit Blinka and all the CircuitPython libraries have been deployed to PyPI for super simple installation on Linux! Here are the top 10 CircuitPython libraries downloaded from PyPI in the last week, including the total downloads for those libraries:

TEAM CIRCUITPYTHON !

What are we up to this week? Let’s check in!

Bryan

The LSM6DSOX is a sweet little accelerometer/gyro combo from ST. We’ve also got a “simple” 3-axis accelerometer from the fine folks at Bosch, the BMA456: Keeping with the motion sensing theme, I’ve got an updated STEMMA QT LSM303 board on my bench, testing it and working on the drivers. If you’re good on motion sensing and instead are feeling a bit pressured to sense something in a portable way, we’ve got the LPS33W ported pressure sensor coming up…

Dan

I updated the Adafruit Windows Drivers package for a bunch of new boards, and added placeholder definitions for other boards that are not yet announced or even thought of yet. The drivers package is not needed for Windows 10, but is still needed for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. There were issues with HID gamepad support in recent versions of CircuitPython, but these have now been fixed due to fixes in the TinyUSB code we use. Scott and I have talked several times about work Scott is doing to make the BLE API more general and easier to use. Watch for more improvements. I’m still working on bonding for BLE. There’s a lot of code reorganization to do in preparation. As mentioned in our Python newsletter, I gave a talk at an MIT service organization reunion about my early personal experiences using computers, and then demonstrated CircuitPython – YouTube.

Kattni

This week included much guide work and complicated Fritzing object creation. I published the new guide for the Adafruit STEMMA Speaker which makes adding better audio to your project super simple. I added two new pages to the Circuit Playground Bluefruit guide: Playground Color Picker and Playground Bluetooth Plotter. The new pages show you how to use CircuitPython to use your mobile phone to control the NeoPixels on your Circuit Playground Bluefruit (CPB), and how to plot the temperature and light levels from the CPB to your mobile phone, both using the Adafruit Bluefruit LE Connect mobile application. I created Fritzing objects for the Circuit Playground TFT Gizmo, the STEMMA Speaker and the 2.9” eInk display breakout. I also successfully tested the FT232H USB to GPIO breakout in VMWare Fusion – so if you have reason to use it with that set up, you’re in luck!

Hacktoberfest started on 1 October, and I went through all the current library issues to identify issues that are Good First Issues. I found a few and created a number of new issues. We’ve already had a lot of activity! Thank you to everyone who has joined us on GitHub for the first time – welcome to our community!

Lucian

I’ve been working on supporting SPI on the STM32, and accompanying that, SPI Flash, which makes it much, much easier to load libraries onto the new Feather F405 and many other STM32 development boards. Now that external flash support is in place, there’s some cleanup work to do for the STM32, along with remaining modules like Digital to Analog Conversion (DAC), UART Serial, and QSPI Flash, which is 4 times the SPIs, BONDed together, with a Q!

Melissa

I’ve been working on adding the TFT Gizmo to both CircuitPython and Arduino. With it has come its own set of challenges including adding more tests for the Circuit Playground Bluefruit and making sure all of the previous boards are still passing their respective tests. Adding bitmap loading to the ImageLoader library was also a lot of fun. Most of these updates are a consequence of working on writing a guide for the TFT Gizmo. Keep an eye out for it.

Scott

I spent the week deep in _bleio and the BLE library. I’ve combined the Central and Peripheral classes into a Connection class to better share code and represent that connections are symmetric once established. I also moved scanning and advertising to Adapter to better represent the device discovery process. On Friday, I realized that the scanning should return an iterator rather than a list. This will allow for receiving results much faster than waiting for a timeout before being able to read the results. It will also allow for infinite scans which can be used to create smarter forever loops. For example, a forever loop could listen for color change broadcasts and update it’s color perpetually. Put this code on a number of devices and you can orchestrate color animations across them all at once. This week, I’m debugging these changes, hope to get demos going and sending out the PRs for others to try.

Upcoming events!

Hacktoberfest is open to everyone in the global community. Whether you’re a developer, student learning to code, event host, or company of any size, you can help drive growth of open source and make positive contributions to an ever-growing community. All backgrounds and skill levels are encouraged to complete the challenge – https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com

October is Open Hardware Month @ Open Source Hardware Association.

“October is Open Hardware Month! Check out the Open Hardware Month website. Host an event, find a local event, or certify your hardware to support Open Source Hardware. We are providing resources and asking you, the community, to host small, local events in the name of open source hardware. Tell us about your October event by filling out the form below. Your event will be featured on OSHWA’s Open Hardware Month page (provided you have followed OSHWA’s rules listed on the “Do’s and Don’ts” page).”

Read more, Tweet for speakers in 2020, and Open Hardware Month @ http://ohm.oshwa.org/

PyCon DE & PyData Berlin, Germany // October 9 – 13 2019. Main conference, 3 days of talks and workshops. More than 100 sessions dedicated to PyData (artificial intelligence, machine learning, ethics…) and Python topics (programming, DevOps, Web, Django…) – de.pycon.org.

Hackaday Superconference is November 15th, 16th, and 17th in Pasadena, California, USA. The Hackaday Superconference is returning for another 3 full days of technical talks, badge hacking, and hands-on workshops: Eventbrite & hackaday.io

Latest releases

CircuitPython’s stable release is 4.1.0 and its unstable release is 5.0.0-alpha.4. New to CircuitPython? Start with our Welcome to CircuitPython Guide.

20191004 is the latest CircuitPython library bundle.

v1.11 is the latest MicroPython release. Documentation for it is here.

3.7.4 is the latest Python release. The latest pre-release version is 3.8.0rc1.

1412 Stars Like CircuitPython? Star it on GitHub!

Call for help – CircuitPython messaging to other languages!

We recently posted on the Adafruit blog about bringing CircuitPython messaging to other languages, one of the exciting features of CircuitPython 4.x is translated control and error messages. Native language messages will help non-native English speakers understand what is happening in CircuitPython even though the Python keywords and APIs will still be in English. If you would like to help, please post to the main issue on GitHub and join us on Discord.

We made this graphic with translated text, we could use your help with that to make sure we got the text right, please check out the text in the image – if there is anything we did not get correct, please let us know. Dan sent me this handy site too.

jobs.adafruit.com – Find a dream job, find great candidates!

jobs.adafruit.com has returned and folks are posting their skills (including CircuitPython) and companies are looking for talented makers to join their companies – from Digi-Key, to Hackaday, Microcenter, Raspberry Pi and more.

New great addition, we now have Non-Profit job listings as well, to kick it off, here are some great jobs at the EFF!

14,360 thanks!

The Adafruit Discord community, where we do all our CircuitPython development in the open, reached over 14,360 humans, thank you! Join today! https://adafru.it/discord

ICYMI – In case you missed it

The wonderful world of Python on hardware! This is our first video-newsletter-podcast that we’ve started! The news comes from the Python community, Discord, Adafruit communities and more. It’s part of the weekly newsletter, then we have a segment on ASK an ENGINEER and this is the video slice from that! The complete Python on Hardware weekly videocast playlist is here.

This video podcast is on iTunes, YouTube, IGTV (Instagram TV), and XML.

Weekly community chat on Adafruit Discord server CircuitPython channel – Audio / Podcast edition – Audio from the Discord chat space for CircuitPython, meetings are usually Mondays at 2pm ET, this is the audio version on iTunes, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and XML feed.

And lastly, we are working up a one-spot destination for all things podcast-able here – podcasts.adafruit.com

Codecademy “Learn Hardware Programming with CircuitPython”

Codecademy, an online interactive learning platform used by more than 45 million people, has teamed up with the leading manufacturer in STEAM electronics, Adafruit Industries, to create a coding course, “Learn Hardware Programming with CircuitPython”. The course is now available in the Codecademy catalog.

Python is a highly versatile, easy to learn programming language that a wide range of people, from visual effects artists in Hollywood to mission control at NASA, use to quickly solve problems. But you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to accomplish amazing things with it. This new course introduces programmers to Python by way of a microcontroller — CircuitPython — which is a Python-based programming language optimized for use on hardware.

CircuitPython’s hardware-ready design makes it easier than ever to program a variety of single-board computers, and this course gets you from no experience to working prototype faster than ever before. Codecademy’s interactive learning environment, combined with Adafruit’s highly rated Circuit Playground Express, present aspiring hardware hackers with a never-before-seen opportunity to learn hardware programming seamlessly online.

Whether for those who are new to programming, or for those who want to expand their skill set to include physical computing, this course will have students getting familiar with Python and creating incredible projects along the way. By the end, students will have built their own bike lights, drum machine, and even a moisture detector that can tell when it’s time to water a plant.

Visit Codecademy to access the Learn Hardware Programming with CircuitPython course and Adafruit to purchase a Circuit Playground Express.

Codecademy has helped more than 45 million people around the world upgrade their careers with technology skills. The company’s online interactive learning platform is widely recognized for providing an accessible, flexible, and engaging experience for beginners and experienced programmers alike. Codecademy has raised a total of $43 million from investors including Union Square Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Thrive Capital, Naspers, Yuri Milner and Richard Branson, most recently raising its $30 million Series C in July 2016.

Contribute!

The CircuitPython Weekly Newsletter is a CircuitPython community-run newsletter emailed every Tuesday. The complete archives are here. It highlights the latest CircuitPython related news from around the web including Python and MicroPython developments. To contribute, edit next week’s draft on GitHub and submit a pull request with the changes. Join our Discord or post to the forum for any further questions.

The wonderful world of Python on hardware!

Episode 51 (October 9, 2019) This is our weekly video-newsletter-podcast!

Watch Ladyada and Phil discuss this week’s Python on hardware news and events.

The news comes from the Python community, Discord, Adafruit communities and more. It’s part of the weekly newsletter we do each week with more than 6,600 readers!

——————————————

Our entire playlist of Python on hardware videos:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjF7R1fz_OOXRMjM7Sm0J2Xt6H81TdDev

The current newsletter post and the archives, over 2 years worth! https://www.adafruitdaily.com/category/circuitpython/

Sign up for the newsletter here: https://www.adafruitdaily.com/

Find out more about CircuitPython at https://CircuitPython.org/

See all the information on CircuitPython on the curated Awesome CircuitPython List

Ashish Derhgawen at Punch Through writes about Testing Bluetooth Low Energy Peripherals using a Python Script

When developing a Bluetooth Low Energy peripheral, it’s often useful to have an app that can connect to and test the peripheral to ensure it’s working as expected. If, however, you don’t already have a companion app for the device, you’d either have to write one from scratch, or use an existing app, such as our flagship mobile app LightBlue® (available on Android and iOS).

LightBlue® allows you to connect to Bluetooth Low Energy devices, read and write to characteristics, subscribe to notifications, and a lot more. Though it’s a powerful tool, you’ll probably need a way to automate more complex tests for long-term development. This is a situation where we can leverage the rapid prototyping capabilities of Python and write a script that emulates a BLE client.

As luck would have it, we recently worked on a device that had a flaky BLE connection with its companion mobile app. We’ll break down how a Python script and Adafruit’s BluetoothLE library was used to test the robustness of the BLE connections, and figure out whether the source of the issue was the mobile app or the device itself.

The nice thing about Adafruit’s BluefruitLE library is that it works on both Linux and macOS. Under the hood, it uses BlueZ on Linux and CoreBluetooth on macOS, but it abstracts away all platform-specific BLE code behind the API. We should also note that this library does not support Windows. For Windows development, an alternative could be to use PyGatt with a BlueGiga dongle.

See the article for details on this implementation and see this guide on using the Adafruit Bluefruit LE Python Library.

The Python on Microcontrollers newsletter – your #1 source for Python information every week – subscriptions open

The word is out that our newsletter is the place for the hottest news involving Python on hardware. 6,600+ readers and growing!

Catch all the weekly news on Python for Microcontrollers with adafruitdaily.com.

This ad-free, spam-free weekly email is filled with the Python information that you may have missed, all in one place!

This includes Python news worldwide – you get a summary of all the software, events, projects, and the latest hardware!

Ensure you catch the weekly news roundup– you can cancel anytime – try our spam-free newsletter today!

Including news on the Circuit Playground Bluefruit, boards to make Halloween fun and much, much more!

The RA8875 Touch Display Driver Board guide has been updated to include setup instructions for usage through User Python code on the Raspberry Pi using Blinka.

Have you gazed longingly at large TFT displays – you know what I’m talking about here, 4″, 5″ or 7″ TFTs with up to 800×480 pixels. Then you look at your micro-controller project, but there’s no way it can control a display like that, one that requires 60Hz refresh and 4 MHz pixel clocking. Heck, it doesn’t even have enough pins. I suppose you could move to ARM core processors with TTL display drivers built in but you’ve already got all these shields working and anyways you like small micros you’ve got.

What if I told you there was a driver chip that could fulfill those longings? A chip that can control up 800×480 displays, and heck, a resistive touchscreen as well. All you need to give up is 5 or so SPI pins. Would you even believe me? Well, sit down because this product may shock you.

The RA8875 is a powerful TFT driver chip. It is a perfect match for any chip that wants to draw on a big TFT screen but doesn’t quite have the oomph (whether it be hardware or speed). Inside is 768KB of RAM, so it can buffer the display (and depending on the screen size also have double overlaying). The interface is SPI with a very basic register read/write method of communication (no strange and convoluted packets). The chip has a range of hardware-accelerated shapes such as lines, rectangles, triangles, ellipses, built in and round-rects. There is also a built in English/European font set (see the datasheet section 7-4-1 for the font table) This makes it possible to draw fast even over SPI.

See this updated guide now!

Jeffrey Mew on the Microsoft Python Visual Studio Code team posts recently:

With (the) October release of the Python extension, we’re excited to announce the support of native editing of Jupyter notebooks inside Visual Studio Code! You can now directly edit .ipynb files and get the interactivity of Jupyter notebooks with all of the power of VS Code.

You can manage source control, open multiple files, and leverage productivity features like IntelliSense, Git integration, and multi-file management, offering a brand-new way for data scientists and developers to experiment and work with data efficiently. You can try out this experience today by downloading the latest version of the Python extension and creating/opening a Jupyter Notebook inside VS Code.

If you don’t already have an existing Jupyter Notebook file, open the VS Code Command Palette with the shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + P (Windows) or Command + SHIFT + P (macOS), and run the “Python: Create Blank New Jupyter Notebook” command.

If you already have a Jupyter Notebook file, it’s as simple as just opening that file in VS Code. It will automatically open with the new native Jupyter editor.

See the article for the details, also the documentation and the GitHub site.

Via Reddit, Łukasz Langa CPython core developer posts on the Python discussion board that Python 3.8.0 is now available.

On behalf of the Python development community and the Python 3.8 release team, I’m pleased to announce the availability of Python 3.8.0.

Python 3.8.0 is the newest feature release of the Python language, and it contains many new features and optimizations. You can find Python 3.8.0 here:

https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-380/

Most third-party distributors of Python should be making 3.8.0 packages available soon.

See the “What’s New in Python 3.8 ” document for more information about features included in the 3.8 series. Detailed information about all changes made in 3.8.0 can be found in its change log.

Maintenance releases for the 3.8 series will follow at regular bi-monthly intervals starting in December of 2019.

We hope you enjoy Python 3.8!

Thanks to all of the many volunteers who help make Python Development and these releases possible! Please consider supporting our efforts by volunteering yourself or through organization contributions to the Python Software Foundation.

https://www.python.org/psf/

The Python.org page is here, with a list of features and online documentation.

We’ve updated the Pixie – the 3W Chainable LED Pixel guide to include Python usage on Linux using the Adafruit Blinka library! The new Python & CircuitPython section includes wiring to a Raspberry Pi and a USB to serial converter, and explains what changes need to be made to CircuitPython code for Pixies to work on Linux. There is a full example that shows how to change individual Pixies, change them all at once, or use slicing to change ranges of them.

Check out the updated Pixie – the 3W Chainable LED Pixel guide!

ICYMI (In case you missed it) – Tuesday’s Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter from AdafruitDaily.com went out – if you missed it, subscribe now!

The next newsletter goes out in a week and being subscribed the best way to keep up with all things Python for hardware.

Over 6,700 subscribers worldwide!

MicroPython slithers its way to Feather!

MicroPython running on a Feather STM32 – GitHub & YouTube.

Scanning and advertising – BLE with CircuitPython update

Scanning and advertising – BLE with CircuitPython update! Proximity based color demo using four Circuit Playground Bluefruit boards, Tweets here and YouTube. Here’s a bit more about it from Scott:

“Last week I was heads down on BLE scanning and advertising. It’s the first phase of BLE and is incredibly powerful on it’s own. By advertising data directly, one can control a bunch of other devices all at once. I showed a simple demo of one device changing the color of another and then a more complex demo where multiple devices are advertising and multiple are scanning. By moving the scanning devices closer to different advertisers, the color changes to the nearest.

To support this, I’ve swapped the scan result from a list to an iterator, added RSSI filtering and added advertising structure prefix filtering. These early filters reduce the number of Python level memory allocations and simplify the user code.

On the library side, I’ve modeled the BLE API after the CircuitPython Register library which uses the Python descriptor protocol to make defining advertisements declarative with easy to reuse components. This week, I’m moving onto advertising designed to facilitate connections and ensuring all of the existing demos Dan has done still work.”

Make a Bluetooth-controlled Color Changing Jack-o-Lantern Pumpkin

In this video, Maker Melissa show you how to take a 3D Printed FAB365 Pumpkin and Adafruit Circuit Playground Bluefruit and add the ability to change the color with your smartphone or Apple Watch. This was printed in Prusament Vanilla White PLA at the recommended settings for the model. Melissa used the Jack-o-lantern with the translucent face, but a carved face version is also available – YouTube.

CircuitPython powered earrings

Check out Felice’s homemade earrings, made with CircuitPython – Twitter.

Interactive CircuitPython Poster from CodeNSolder

Congrats to the team in New Delhi City for a fantastic interactive CircuitPython poster – Twitter.

Supercon – Supercharge Your Hardware (Old and New) with CircuitPython

Latest Dose Of Hardware Talks Headed To Supercon – Hackaday.

The tickets have sold out even as the list of incredible speakers grows. Today we bring you the third dose of talks you’ll see at the Hackaday Superconference in November — whether you were lucky enough to grab a ticket, or will be watching the livestream, these eight will be speaking on topics from algorithmically-augmented live music performance to the hardware that captures the real world for display in VR and from leveraging the power of lookup tables to harnessing our engineering talent in a way that truly enriches humanity. If you missed the two speaker announcements that have already come out, go back and take a look at those as well as the workshops being held during Supercon.

AND, big news!

Supercharge Your Hardware (Old and New) with CircuitPython by Scott Shawcroft

“CircuitPython makes programming hardware easier than ever by bringing the popular Python language to modern, inexpensive 32-bit microcontrollers. This doesn’t need to be limited to modern hardware though. By pairing a modern microcontroller running CircuitPython and a vintage computer, such as a GameBoy or Yamaha piano keyboard, you can unlock the unique characteristics of these vintage devices. In this talk, you’ll learn the basics of how CircuitPython makes coding easy, how it works under the hood, and how to extend CircuitPython with C. As an example, we’ll supercharge a Nintendo’s GameBoy with CircuitPython. By the end of the talk, you’ll be able to supercharge your own hardware project with CircuitPython.”

Adafruit will have some team members at Supercon and some special hardware surprises thanks to Digi-Key!

PyConDE in Berlin photos!

Lots of fun was had during PyConDE last week. Especially at the Sprints, where participants used the MicroPython pyboard D and accessories to build a Multimode Sensor Platform with AR. The full project can be found on GitHub. Thank you Christine!

And speaking of PyConDE, here are some tweets from PyLadies at the event (Adafruit was a sponsor) – Twitter.

Sponsor arturo182 on GitHub

Arturo creates open source hardware and shares it on GitHub. In addition to the standard KiCad files, Arturo also shares schematics, renders of the boards, and additional files. Lots of Python on hardware!

You’ve seen the work, the real-time Tweets of work in progress, and now you can sponsor Arturo on GitHub (we did) – GitHub.

CircuitPython-compatible StringCar M0 Express and StringCar M4 Express boards

From CGrover, a CircuitPython-compatible StringCar update!

“Here is the updated M0 version that’s currently in process at OSH Park + OSH Stencils, and an M4 version that will be sent to the OSHs next week. The objective is to create a string car racer that can autonomously learn about its environment and adjust tradeoffs for speed and battery longevity. The CircuitPython versions of the StringCar controllers make it really easy to add and interactively adjust performance features such as motor and battery efficiency, end-of-string collision avoidance, string length calculation, and predictive braking. Also, being able to watch its own battery status means that it’ll always return to the home end of the string rather than forcing me to get up from the lawn chair to manually retrieve the car from somewhere along the string. Besides being facile for adding and testing new features in real-time, CircuitPython also supports libraries that abstract string car functions, simplifying the primary code module to make it easier for novice programmers to get involved in customizing their own string car racer. Moving to the M0 and M4 versions challenged my PCB and software development skill sets significantly. Adafruit’s documentation and learning guides made the journey a bit easier. Bryan (siddacious) was exceptionally helpful and encouraging.”

Quoth the Raven MOAR PYTHON

Laser-bird knows when it’s sleeping, knows when you’re awake! An animatronic raven made with CircuitPython – Instagram.

AWS DeepRacer arrived – Runs on Python

AWS DeepRacer is an autonomous 1/18th scale race car driven by reinforcement learning, 3D racing simulator, and global racing league. You can build your own RL model for AWS DeepRacer using the AWS DeepRacer 3D racing simulator. Building a model requires basic Python programming skills. We picked one up and will get Blinka on it shortly.

Python powered Mini PiTFT – 135×240 Color TFT Add-on for Raspberry Pi

Mini PiTFT – 135×240 Color TFT Add-on for Raspberry Pi – If you’re looking for the most compact li’l color display for a Raspberry Pi (most likely a Pi Zero) project, this might be just the thing you need!

The Mini PiTFT – 135×240 Color TFT Add-on for Raspberry Pi is your little TFT friend, ready to snap onto any and all Raspberry Pi computers, to give you a little display. The Mini PiTFT comes with a full color 240×135 pixel IPS LCD display with great visibility at all angles. The TFT uses only the SPI port so it’s very fast, and we leave plenty of pins remaining available for buttons, LEDs, sensors, etc. It’s also nice and compact so it will fit into any case.

This display is super small, only about 1.14″ diagonal, but since it is an IPS display, it’s very readable with high contrast and visibility. We had a little space on the top so we give you two tactile buttons on GPIO pins so you can create a simple user interface. On the bottom we have a Qwiic/STEMMA QT connector for I2C sensors and device so you can plug and play any of our STEMMA QT devices.

Using the display is very easy, we have a kernel driver and Python library for the ST7789 chipset. You can set it up as a console output so you can have text and user interface through the Raspberry Pi OS or you can draw images, text, whatever you like, using the Python imaging library. Our tests showed ~15 FPS update rates so you can do animations or simple video.

Comes completely pre-assembled and tested, so you don’t need to do anything but plug it in and install our Python code! Works with any Raspberry Pi computer – Adafruit.

ADABOX holiday edition with CircuitPython

ADABOX 14 is the holiday edition, it will be CircuitPython powered, we will run out before the holidays so sign up now, it can be just for you, or given as a gift – ADABOX.

Open Hardware month, a post a day all month long!

It’s open hardware month and we’re posting about Open Source hardware past, present, and future – all month long (pictured above, the first Arduino). Follow along at the Adafruit blog with the tag/search: #OHM2019. Topics so far include:

• The first 2 orders at Adafruit… now up to 2,161,166 orders – Day 13, 10/13/2019.
• Photos of the first Arduino (2005) – Day 12, 10/12 2019.
• In 2010 there were 13 Open Source Hardware companies that were making $1 million or more… – Day 11, 10/11/2019
• Opening Hardware 2010 at Eyebeam in NYC – Day 10, 10/10/2019.
• The Open Source Gift Guide, the early years – Day 9, 10/9/2019 (posted it on 10/10/2019, whoops)
• Before the iPhone, before the Raspberry Pi, before Amazon Echo Show, there was Chumby – Day 8, 10/8/2019.
• Mitch Altman Open-source hardware pioneer – Day 7, 10/7/2019.
• The Open Source logo(s) – Day 6, 10/6/2019.
• Open Source Hardware events all month long, EVENTS! – Day 5, 10/5/2019.
• Open Source Hardware Certifications and more! – Day 4, 10/4/2019.
• Teuthis Open Source MP3 Player 2001 – Daisy by Raphael Abrams – Day 3, 10/3/2019.
• What is the Open-Source Hardware Definition? – Day 2, 10/2/2019.
• Open hardware summit – Limor “Ladyada” Fried keynote 2010 – Day 1, 10/1/2019.

News from around the web!

Thea Flowers made a CircuitPython driver for the Analog Devices AD5689 16-bit DAC – GitHub.

Speaking of drivers, Dan wrote one too! Below is a CircuitPython driver for the MCP9600 thermocouple I2C amplifier. In addition to the MCP9600 breakout, you will also need a thermocouple, which can be found in the Adafruit store. The MCP9600 supports several thermocouple types for different temperature ranges. The “K” type is the default, with a range of -200C to +1372C – GitHub.

More testing today of Dan Cogliano’s EZ Make oven controller – Twitter.

Microcontroller Monday – the Adafruit FT232H – CircuitPython – bigl.es.

Professor John Gallaugher and 100 Circuit Playground Bluefruit boards for students – Twitter. “Time to mint some new Pythonistas”

Circuit Playground Express heading to the Singapore Maker Faire extravaganza 2019 – Instagram.

Joey is working on some under-shelf lighting using CircuitPython – Instagram.

A Serpente with micro-USB. And it’s green – Twitter.

Some Adafruit breakouts made it to space! apex: A new commercial off-the-shelf on-board computer platform for sounding rockets. Looks like: Raspberry Pi Zero with camera, Adafruit LSM9DS1 9-DOF, DS3231 RTC, ADS1015 ADC 4 channel amp, and a BME280 Temp/Humidity/Pressure sensor. Interesting note… They used ESP32-Pico-D4’s and “As storage media, Samsung Evo Plus µSD cards have been chosen, due to their predecessor usage on the ISS AstroPi program7 and their X-ray proof, waterproof, magnetism, and heat resistant design”

6th graders designing smart clothing with the Circuit Playground Express – Twitter.

NCD IoT connected products. We did not know about these folks, this looks interesting.

Debug’n’Dump – FT232H based and supports JTAG, SWD, I2C, SPI (and SPI flashes) and UART – Twitter.

PowerWing: 6-36V Power Supply FeatherWing. Supplies 5V at up to 1A from 6-36V in a FeatherWing form factor – Tindie.

Cool 6 year old with a Monster M4sk Pikachu – Twitter.

Two really good posts over at boochow: Output MicroPython REPL to TFT LCD and Scroll function added to MicroPython ST7735 driver.

TensorFlow in your browser: Object Detection with Bounding Boxes. Watch TensorFlow identify and box everyday objects using your phone or computer’s camera – learn.adafruit.com

Turn your micro:bit into fireflies, using broadcast and Bluetooth to simulate fireflies with synchronous flashing – Twitter.

If the global supply chain collapses by 2030, Collapse OS is there to help soften the blow, it’s a Z80 kernel and a collection of programs, tools and documentation that allows you to assemble an OS – collapseos.org & GitHub.

Introducing Partner Governance – ARM embed.

Orange Pi Zero LTS: An ‘upgraded’ alternative to the old Raspberry Pis – LeMaRiva.

36 pages of reverse-engineered schematics for the original Game Boy chip (minus CPU) – GitHub.

Flash Is Responsible for the Internet’s Most Creative Era, VICE and WIRED. An upcoming book: Web Design. The Evolution of the Digital World 1990–Today. And here’s a history of FLASH. Fun side note, Flash on mobile devices is indirectly responsible for a lot of our work now on low-cost electronic devices with screens.

Sniffle is a sniffer for Bluetooth 5 and 4.x (LE) using TI CC1352/CC26x2 hardware – GitHub.

How Susan Kare Designed User-Friendly Icons for the First Macintosh. The graphic designer is receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award from Cooper Hewitt for her recognizable computer icons, typefaces and graphics – Smithsonian.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019 was awarded jointly to John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino “for the development of lithium-ion batteries.” via The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2019. Sun. 13 Oct 2019 – Noble Prize.

These clothes use outlandish designs to trick facial recognition software into thinking you’re not a human – Business Insider.

I Read About “Design For Trust” So You Don’t Have To – Simply Secure.

Ken Thompson’s Unix password – leah blogs.

Testing Bluetooth Low Energy Peripherals using a Python Script – Punch Through.

Tiny TTN Mapper ready for the wild – how to build yours – hackster.io

Bel is a spec for a new dialect of Lisp, written in itself. It consists of two text files meant to be read in parallel: a guide to the Bel language, and the Bel source. For those who just want to see some code examples, there’s a file of those – Bel.

PyTorch and TensorFlow usage in 2019 by Becca – Adafruit.

Free iOS Glyph Icons – icons8.com, and ICONSVG.

Kevin is compiling a collection of cardboard attachment technique examples – Twitter & Google Drive.

Imagineering in a Box!

“Have you ever wondered how theme parks come to life? Disney Imagineers from hundreds of career disciplines around the world share how they use a wide range of skills – from story development and conceptual design, to math, physics and engineering – that all come together to create immersive experiences. Imagineering in a Box allows you to explore different aspects of theme park design, from characters to ride development, as you design a theme park of your very own.”

The videos are here – YouTube. The ONLY thing missing is the hardware to do this, we’ll email Disney and see if they want a CircuitPython + CRICKIT for these lessons!

Design, Modeling and Control of a Robot Bat: From Bio-inspiration to Engineering Solutions – YouTube.

The Xaxxon OpenLIDAR Sensor is a rotational laser scanner with open software and hardware, intended for use with autonomous mobile robots and simultaneous-location-and-mapping (SLAM) applications – xaxxon.

Publicly available Human Activity Recognition Datasets – GitHub.

MFGday GHI Electronics & BrainPad – YouTube.

Turn Python Scripts into Beautiful ML Tools … Introducing Streamlit, an app framework built for ML engineers.

Machine learning projects for Scratch with Raspberry Pi – projects.raspberrypi.org

Raspberry Pi Handheld 3D Scanner, overview and YouTube.

Retro ESP32 is a turbo charged Odroid Go Launcher, Emulator and ROM Manager – GitHub.

SandDance for VSCode, by using easy-to-understand views, SandDance helps you find insights about your data, which in turn help you tell stories supported by data, build cases based on evidence, test hypotheses, dig deeper into surface explanations, support decisions for purchases, or relate data into a wider, real world context – marketplace.visualstudio.com

A collection of interesting, funny, and depressing search queries to plug into Shodan, IoT search engine – GitHub. That is a bank that has a LED signs for free cookies.

A Code Glitch May Have Caused Errors In More Than 100 Published Studies – Motherboard.

urllib3 just reached 1 BILLION downloads, it’s the third package on PyPI to do so, the other two being six and pip – PeyPy via Twitter. Using PeyPy we looked up Blinka: we’re over 142,000 downloads!

It was National 4-H Week last week …

“It is believed that the first official ‘Club Week’ was proclaimed by Governor Christianson in Minnesota in 1926 when he established April 18-24 as ‘Club Week’ to promote the work of the Boys and Girls Clubs in that state, as reported in the April-May, 1926 issue of National Boys and Girls Club News.”

Check out the Tweets and don’t forget, there is a special Python-powered 4-H edition of Circuit Playground Express!

From maker to market How ‘Ladyada’, Founder of Adafruit, developed Circuit Playground, Startup Magazine, and PDF.

Python Release Cycle – Made by: @di_codes Made with, source, and more.

PyCon US 2020 is opening applications for financial aid. They are accepting applications through January 31, 2020. To apply, first set up an account on the site, and then you will be able to fill out the application through your dashboard. The financial aid program aims to bring many folks to PyCon by limiting the maximum grant amount per person; this way PyCon can offer support to more people based on individual need. The financial aid program reimburses direct travel costs including transportation, hotel, and childcare, as well as offering discounted or waived registration tickets. For complete details, see our FAQ, and contact pycon-aid@python.org with further questions – PyCon blog.

#ICYDNCI What was the most popular, most clicked link, in last week’s newsletter? Ada Lovelace Day.

Speaking of Ada Lovelace Day, Professor John and students made this great iOS app celebrating women in tech as part of their first exam – Twitter. Looks like a Ladyada made it in there, thank you!

PyDev of the Week: Elana Hashman from Mouse vs Python

CircuitPython Weekly for October 14th, 2019 on YouTube

Made with Mu

Does Mu work with the new mac OSX Catalina? Yes! With a note from Ntoll the creator… Daily builds are here…

“the update to OSX Catalina breaks Mu in dark and high-contrast modes (text remains black, so can’t be seen). It’s still fine for “day” mode, although code colouration might not work properly. I tested things this morning and it’s down to the version of Qt packaged with the 1.0.2 version being old. I hope to release a new alpha version early next week that fixes the issue. BTW, the only reason it’s called “alpha” is because the *new* features may not be finished or finalised. Alpha versions of Mu still have to pass all the tests and things we do for a regular release. Just letting you know in case you get folks on your forums or support channels asking.”

Why Mu? Mu tries to make it as easy as possible to get started with programming but aims to help you graduate to “real” development tools soon after. Everything in Mu is the “real thing” but presented in as simple and obvious way possible. It’s like the toddling stage in learning to walk: you’re finding your feet and once you’re confident, you should move on and explore! Put simply, Mu aims to foster autonomy. Try out Mu today! – codewith.mu

Coming Soon

It’s pumpkin spice season! And that means sending out circuit board panels. This is the one going out now. Lots of testers, but also some new designs to keep an eye out for! Can you guess what some of them are?

A new case is coming soon for the PyBadge.

BrainCraft (EDGE) badge Version 2 is coming along!

Testing the Adafruit FT232H board with NeoPixels on Windows PC – Did you know it’s possible to drive NeoPixels from an FT232H? Yes! This lets us control these low cost LEDs from any computer with a USB port, like a Mac or Windows PC – direct from Python! This could make for some cool, inexpensive, easy to build interactive art projects – YouTube.

New Learn Guides!

Circuit Playground Bluetooth Cauldron from Noe and Pedro

Updated Guides – Now With More Python!

You can use CircuitPython libraries on Raspberry Pi! We’re updating all of our CircuitPython guides to show how to wire up sensors to your Raspberry Pi, and load the necessary CircuitPython libraries to get going using them with Python. We’ll be including the updates here so you can easily keep track of which sensors are ready to go. Check it out!

Adafruit 15×7 CharliePlex FeatherWing

Adafruit CharliePlex LED Matrix Bonnet

Adafruit BMP388 – Precision Barometric Pressure and Altimeter

MLX90393 Wide-Range 3-Axis Magnetometer

Adafruit NeoTrellis

Adafruit PN532 RFID/NFC Breakout and Shield

Adafruit Seesaw

Adafruit 16-Channel PWM/Servo HAT & Bonnet for Raspberry Pi

Monochrome OLED Breakouts

Adafruit GPIO Expander Bonnet for Raspberry Pi

Adafruit MAX31856 Universal Thermocouple Amplifier

Introducing Adafruit Trellis

TMP006 Infrared Sensor Breakout

ADXL345 Digital Accelerometer

CircuitPython Libraries!

CircuitPython support for hardware continues to grow. We are adding support for new sensors and breakouts all the time, as well as improving on the drivers we already have. As we add more libraries and update current ones, you can keep up with all the changes right here!

For the latest drivers, download the Adafruit CircuitPython Library Bundle.

If you’d like to contribute, CircuitPython libraries are a great place to start. Have an idea for a new driver? File an issue on CircuitPython! Interested in helping with current libraries? Check out this GitHub issue on CircuitPython for an overview of the State of the CircuitPython Libraries, updated each week. We’ve included open issues from the library issue lists, and details about repo-level issues that need to be addressed. We have a guide on contributing to CircuitPython with Git and Github if you need help getting started. You can also find us in the #circuitpython channel on the Adafruit Discord. Feel free to contact Kattni (@kattni) with any questions.

You can check out this list of all the CircuitPython libraries and drivers available.

The current number of CircuitPython libraries is 187!

Updated Libraries!

Here’s this week’s updated CircuitPython libraries:

• Adafruit_CircuitPython_AdafruitIO
• Adafruit_CircuitPython_MiniMQTT
• Adafruit_CircuitPython_MCP3xxx
• Adafruit_CircuitPython_NeoPixel
• Adafruit_CircuitPython_ESP32SPI
• Adafruit_CircuitPython_FancyLED
• Adafruit_CircuitPython_RGB_Display

PyPI Download Stats!

We’ve written a special library called Adafruit Blinka that makes it possible to use CircuitPython Libraries on Raspberry Pi and other compatible single-board computers. Adafruit Blinka and all the CircuitPython libraries have been deployed to PyPI for super simple installation on Linux! Here are the top 10 CircuitPython libraries downloaded from PyPI in the last week, including the total downloads for those libraries:

What is the team up to?

Bryan

“Over the past week I’ve been working on drivers for the LSM303AGR Accelerometer+Magnetometer by ST which is similar to but not quite the same as the LSM303DLH. Both sensors actually have two separate chips inside with different I2C addresses. Other than the AGR being significantly smaller (2x2mm!) it has a different onboard magnetometer. The two sensors now share code for the accelerometer and have separate libraries for their magnetometers. While testing the G-range settings of the new accelerometer (by whacking it with a pen of course), I found that the range settings were not sicking. After a few hours of head scratching and consulting an oracle (my logic analyzer), I discovered a bug in an underlying library that was clobbering the range setting bits while setting some adjacent bits in the same register. The bug has been fixed, things work correctly. Not today bugs, not today!”

Dan

“I’m continuing to work on some code refactoring needed to add BLE bonding. Originally some refactoring implied a whole chain of changes that became too complicated. I’ve now refactored the refactoring so I can do it in discrete pieces. I’m also implementing a way to read the microcontroller supply voltage from CircuitPython so you can detect when the input voltage goes low enough that the 3.3V regulator can no longer output 3.3V. This would mean, for instance, that the battery level is getting too low to run safely any more.”

Kattni

“This week, we’re diving back into updating guides with CircuitPython and Python Usage. Thanks to Adafruit Blinka, you can use CircuitPython libraries on Linux computers such as the Raspberry Pi. Last year, we went through all of the existing CircuitPython libraries and published them to PyPI for use on Linux. We updated a huge number of guides with both CircuitPython and Python Usage. However, there are still a huge number left. (We have a lot of guides!) This week began with updating the Trellis guide, and continued with the TMP006 guide. Now we’re jumping back into the project right where we left off, with MAX31856, ADXL345, and the MPR121 HAT and shield up next. All updated guides will be added to the newsletter and blogged. If you’re interested in using Adafruit hardware on your Raspberry Pi or other compatible single board computer, keep an eye out for these updates!”

Lucian

“I’ve spent the last week working on some bug fixes, UART and DAC support. UART will require a significantly different structure than the other busio peripherals like I2C and SPI, since it needs to constantly be ready to receive new data even when the user isn’t expecting it. This is especially important for GPS devices, so the feature has been put on hold until the GPS FeatherWing arrives. In the meantime, I’ve wrapped up DAC support for the STM32 boards that support it, such as the Feather STM32F405 and the Pyboard. Once both features are merged, I’ll be moving on to some much needed cleanup of the STM32 port, and a dramatic expansion of the number of STM32 boards supported with CircuitPython. I’m also looking forward to fully testing the big pile of FeatherWings on my desk, and working on some spooky halloween projects.”

Melissa

“This week I finished up writing the TFT Gizmo Learn guide. You can check the guide here. After that, I wrote three demos for connecting external breakouts and PiTFTs up to the Raspberry Pi. The demos are meant to be used among all of the different color displays. I started with the 2.2” TFT Breakout and am doing a sweep among all of the guides to add some Python code to it. If your favorite breakout or PiTFT display guide doesn’t already have the Python code, be sure to keep an eye out for some updates.”

Upcoming events!

Hacktoberfest is open to everyone in the global community. Whether you’re a developer, student learning to code, event host, or company of any size, you can help drive growth of open source and make positive contributions to an ever-growing community. All backgrounds and skill levels are encouraged to complete the challenge – https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com

October is Open Hardware Month @ Open Source Hardware Association.

“October is Open Hardware Month! Check out the Open Hardware Month website. Host an event, find a local event, or certify your hardware to support Open Source Hardware. We are providing resources and asking you, the community, to host small, local events in the name of open source hardware. Tell us about your October event by filling out the form below. Your event will be featured on OSHWA’s Open Hardware Month page (provided you have followed OSHWA’s rules listed on the “Do’s and Don’ts” page).”

Read more, Tweet for speakers in 2020, and Open Hardware Month @ http://ohm.oshwa.org/

October 28–31, 2019. Be part of the ML revolution. Santa Clara, California, USA. TensorFlow is powering everything from data centers to edge devices, across industries from finance to advanced healthcare. And now, with TensorFlow 2.0 and the evolving ecosystem of tools and libraries, it’s doing it all so much easier – TensorFlow World.

Hackaday Superconference is November 15th, 16th, and 17th in Pasadena, California, USA. The Hackaday Superconference is returning for another 3 full days of technical talks, badge hacking, and hands-on workshops: Eventbrite & hackaday.io

April 15-23, 2020, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA – The PyCon 2020 conference, which will take place in Pittsburgh, is the largest annual gathering for the community using and developing the open-source Python programming language. It is produced and underwritten by the Python Software Foundation, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing and promoting Python. Through PyCon, the PSF advances its mission of growing the international community of Python programmers – PyCon 2020.

Latest releases

CircuitPython’s stable release is 4.1.0 and its unstable release is 5.0.0-alpha.4. New to CircuitPython? Start with our Welcome to CircuitPython Guide.

20191014 is the latest CircuitPython library bundle.

v1.11 is the latest MicroPython release. Documentation for it is here.

3.7.4 is the latest Python release. The latest pre-release version is 3.8.0rc1.

1.4k Stars Like CircuitPython? Star it on GitHub!

Call for help – CircuitPython messaging to other languages!

We posted on the Adafruit blog about bringing CircuitPython messaging to other languages, one of the exciting features of CircuitPython 4.x is translated control and error messages. Native language messages will help non-native English speakers understand what is happening in CircuitPython even though the Python keywords and APIs will still be in English. If you would like to help, please post to the main issue on GitHub and join us on Discord.

We made this graphic with translated text, we could use your help with that to make sure we got the text right, please check out the text in the image – if there is anything we did not get correct, please let us know. Dan sent me this handy site too.

jobs.adafruit.com – Find a dream job, find great candidates!

jobs.adafruit.com has returned and folks are posting their skills (including CircuitPython) and companies are looking for talented makers to join their companies – from Digi-Key, to Hackaday, Microcenter, Raspberry Pi and more.

14,450 thanks!

The Adafruit Discord community, where we do all our CircuitPython development in the open, reached over 14,450 humans, thank you! Join today! https://adafru.it/discord

ICYMI – In case you missed it

The wonderful world of Python on hardware! This is our first video-newsletter-podcast that we’ve started! The news comes from the Python community, Discord, Adafruit communities and more. It’s part of the weekly newsletter, then we have a segment on ASK an ENGINEER and this is the video slice from that! The complete Python on Hardware weekly videocast playlist is here.

This video podcast is on iTunes, YouTube, IGTV (Instagram TV), and XML.

Weekly community chat on Adafruit Discord server CircuitPython channel – Audio / Podcast edition – Audio from the Discord chat space for CircuitPython, meetings are usually Mondays at 2pm ET, this is the audio version on iTunes, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and XML feed.

And lastly, we are working up a single destination for all things podcast-able here – podcasts.adafruit.com

Codecademy “Learn Hardware Programming with CircuitPython”

Codecademy, an online interactive learning platform used by more than 45 million people, has teamed up with the leading manufacturer in STEAM electronics, Adafruit Industries, to create a coding course, “Learn Hardware Programming with CircuitPython”. The course is now available in the Codecademy catalog.

Python is a highly versatile, easy to learn programming language that a wide range of people, from visual effects artists in Hollywood to mission control at NASA, use to quickly solve problems. But you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to accomplish amazing things with it. This new course introduces programmers to Python by way of a microcontroller — CircuitPython — which is a Python-based programming language optimized for use on hardware.

CircuitPython’s hardware-ready design makes it easier than ever to program a variety of single-board computers, and this course gets you from no experience to working prototype faster than ever before. Codecademy’s interactive learning environment, combined with Adafruit’s highly rated Circuit Playground Express, present aspiring hardware hackers with a never-before-seen opportunity to learn hardware programming seamlessly online.

Whether for those who are new to programming, or for those who want to expand their skill set to include physical computing, this course will have students getting familiar with Python and creating incredible projects along the way. By the end, students will have built their own bike lights, drum machine, and even a moisture detector that can tell when it’s time to water a plant.

Visit Codecademy to access the Learn Hardware Programming with CircuitPython course and Adafruit to purchase a Circuit Playground Express.

Codecademy has helped more than 45 million people around the world upgrade their careers with technology skills. The company’s online interactive learning platform is widely recognized for providing an accessible, flexible, and engaging experience for beginners and experienced programmers alike. Codecademy has raised a total of $43 million from investors including Union Square Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Thrive Capital, Naspers, Yuri Milner and Richard Branson, most recently raising its $30 million Series C in July 2016.

Contribute!

The CircuitPython Weekly Newsletter is a CircuitPython community-run newsletter emailed every Tuesday. The complete archives are here. It highlights the latest CircuitPython related news from around the web including Python and MicroPython developments. To contribute, edit next week’s draft on GitHub and submit a pull request with the changes. Join our Discord or post to the forum for any further questions.

Via dice.com, which programming languages are most in-demand by employers? Important for those who want to leverage their skills to land a particularly high-paying job. Fortunately, a new list gives us a pretty accurate rundown, and it’s filled with the usual suspects: SQL, Java, JavaScript, Python, and so on.

Python

It’s particularly worth paying attention to Python: in addition to serving as an immensely popular general-purpose language, it’s really come into its own as a language for very specialized functions, including machine learning, microcontrollers and finance IT. That’s a core reason why a JetBrains survey from earlier this year named it the most-studied language among developers.

A recent study by IEEE Spectrum also noted that employers want developers skilled in Python, Java, C, C++, and JavaScript, so these languages’ presence on the Burning Glass list should come as no surprise, either. All of these programming languages enjoy massive install bases across a variety of platforms, including mobile and the web; they’re also taught widely in schools and bootcamps, ensuring that there’s a steady pipeline of newly minted technologists who know them.

See the full article on dice.com.

The wonderful world of Python on hardware!

Episode 52 (October 16, 2019)

One year of weekly videos which celebrate Python on Hardware!

This is our weekly video-newsletter-podcast!

Watch Ladyada and Phil discuss this week’s Python on hardware news and events.

The news comes from the Python community, Discord, Adafruit communities and more. It’s part of the weekly newsletter we do each week with more than 6,600 readers!

——————————————

Our entire playlist of Python on hardware videos:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjF7R1fz_OOXRMjM7Sm0J2Xt6H81TdDev

The current newsletter post and the archives, 3 years worth! https://www.adafruitdaily.com/category/circuitpython/

Sign up for the newsletter here: https://www.adafruitdaily.com/

Find out more about CircuitPython at https://CircuitPython.org/

See all the information on CircuitPython on the curated Awesome CircuitPython List

The Python Software Foundation has just sent out the latest PSF Community News:

The PSF Updated its Code of Conduct!

The PSF Board approved a new organization-wide Code of Conduct and enforcement guidelines at the August 2019 board meeting, and reporting guidelines at the September 2019 board meeting. Check them out:

• https://www.python.org/psf/conduct/
• https://www.python.org/psf/conduct/enforcement/
• https://www.python.org/psf/conduct/reporting/

Python in Education Grants

The PSF is supporting the following grants as part of its Python in Education Initiative:

• Beeware was awarded a $50,000 grant to help improve Python on Android. Check out their blog and call for contractors here: https://beeware.org/news/buzz/beeware-project-awarded-a-psf-education-grant/.
• $12,000 was awarded to Meg Ray to work on creating a Python in Education website where we can curate educational information from all over the world
• Friendly-traceback aims to provide simplified tracebacks translated into as many languages as possible. The project maintainer is looking for volunteers to help with tasks such as documenting possible SyntaxError use cases and documenting exceptions that haven’t already been covered. Check out their full call to action here: https://aroberge.blogspot.com/2019/06/abolishing-syntaxerror-invalid-syntax.html

Read the full announcement here: http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2019/09/grants-awarded-for-python-in-education.html

PyPI Security Q4 2019 Request for Proposals period opens!

The Python Software Foundation Packaging Working Group has received a grant from Facebook Research to implement advanced security features for PyPI. These features include cryptographic signing of uploaded artifacts and the infrastructure necessary to implement automated detection of malicious files uploaded to the index.

Interested? Check out http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2019/09/pypi-security-q4-2019-request-for.html for more information. Proposals are due October 21, 2019 AoE!

Want to keep up with community news from the PSF – sign up on here.

The Python on Microcontrollers newsletter – your #1 source for Python information every week

Subscribe today, arrives in your inbox every Tuesday

The word is out that our newsletter is the place for the hottest news involving Python on hardware. 6,600+ readers and growing!

Catch all the weekly news on Python for Microcontrollers with adafruitdaily.com.

This ad-free, spam-free weekly email is filled with the Python information that you may have missed, all in one place!

This includes Python news worldwide – you get a summary of all the software, events, projects, and the latest hardware!

Ensure you catch the weekly news roundup– you can cancel anytime – try our spam-free newsletter today!

Including news on the Circuit Playground Bluefruit, boards to make Halloween fun and much, much more!

The Adafruit eInk Display Breakouts guide has been updated to include setup instructions for usage through User Python code on the Raspberry Pi using Blinka as well as use with displayio on CircuitPython.

Easy e-paper finally comes to microcontrollers, with these breakouts, shields and friends that are designed to make it a breeze to add a tri-color eInk display. Chances are you’ve seen one of those new-fangled ‘e-readers’ like the Kindle or Nook. They have gigantic electronic paper ‘static’ displays – that means the image stays on the display even when power is completely disconnected. The image is also high contrast and very daylight readable. It really does look just like printed paper!

We’ve liked these displays for a long time, but they were never designed for makers to use. Finally, we decided to make our own!

See this updated guide now!

ICYMI (In case you missed it) – Tuesday’s Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter from AdafruitDaily.com went out – if you missed it, subscribe now!

The next newsletter goes out in a week and being subscribed the best way to keep up with all things Python for hardware.

Over 6,767 subscribers worldwide!

Buy One Give One at Adafruit with Black Girls Code

For a limited time, whenever you buy a Circuit Playground Express the regular price of $24.95, on this page! Adafruit will automatically donate one to Black Girls CODE. Black Girls CODE goal is to empower young women of color ages 7-17 to embrace the current tech marketplace as builders + creators.

Black Girls CODE vision is to increase the number of women of color in the digital space by empowering girls of color ages 7 to 17 to become innovators in STEM fields, leaders in their communities, and builders of their own futures through exposure to computer science and technology. To provide African-American youth with the skills to occupy some of the 1.4 million computing job openings expected to be available in the U.S. by 2020, and to train 1 million girls by 2040.

This “Buy One Give One” is sponsored by Adafruit. For “Buy One Give One” partnerships, and sponsorship information email pt@adafruit.com.

Get, and GIVE, one today!

CircuitPython Blinka snakes its way to Amazon AWS IoT

CircuitPython Blinka snakes its way to Amazon AWS IoT! Setting Up Your Raspberry Pi and Moisture Sensor – AWS IoT.

“The libraries for the Adafruit STEMMA moisture sensor are written for CircuitPython. To run them on a Raspberry Pi, you need to install the latest version of Python 3 (Adafruit Blinka libraries).”

Pepper’s Ghost PyPortal

A CircuitPython powered PyPortal with a spooky sandwich-eating Pepper’s ghost GIF reflected, using a cellphone glass screen protector inside of a 3D printed lantern – Twitter.

CircuitPython Powered Candy Dispensing Skull

Make an app-powered, touch-responsive talking skull/candy “bowl” in CircuitPython with the Circuit Playground Bluefruit. Code & build info – GitHub, via Twitter.

CircuitPython Libraries contributing! New section on circuitpython.org

If you’d like to contribute to the CircuitPython project, the CircuitPython libraries are a great way to begin. This page is updated weekly with status information from the CircuitPython libraries, including open issues and repository-level issues.

If this is your first time contributing, or you’d like to see our recommended contribution workflow, we have a guide on Contributing to CircuitPython with Git and Github. You can also find us in the #circuitpython channel on the Adafruit Discord.

Have an idea for a new driver or library? File an issue on the CircuitPython repo!

Visit the new section on circuitpython.org!

CircuitPython powered Bibliocircuitry

The INLS 690, “The Makerspace Class,” created Bibliocircuitry projects using CircuitPython. This one is from Laura March and contains voices of her parents inside the book – Twitter and YouTube.

Make your own CircuitPython powered interactive conference poster

Aakanksha Agrawal and Ayan Pahwa from ILUG-D and HHC-D, showcased an interactive hardware poster presentation at PyCon India 2019 conference powered by CircuitPython.

Here’s the demo video, step by step guide to build your own and a blog about their conference experience. Congrats to the team who put this one together.

Feather floats with the Maker Buoy

The Maker Buoy is a low cost, solar powered, open source drifting buoy. They are now offering a populated Maker Buoy board for $45. Add-ons include: Rockblock modem and GPS which allows communicating over Iridium. Includes I2C header, watchdog timer, status LED, and flashing strobe circuitry – makerbuoy.com & Twitter. We also added this to the awesome-feather list!

Bluefruit on macOS Catalina + Catalyst

Jerry tweeted about macOS Catalina’s new feature that allows running iOS apps using Catalyst, the example was our Bluefruit app, so we of course had to try it! It was easy! We’re going to test and do any fixes and have a version out soon, thanks Collin! – Youtube.

81 boards on CircuitPython.org

There are now 81 boards on CircuitPython.org! Latest update includes:

The Cedar Grove StringCar M0 Express is an ATSAMD21-based CircuitPython compatible board used to control a simple string car racer robot. The board is architecturally similar to the Adafruit Trinket M0 and ItsyBitsy M0 Express microcontroller boards with the addition of battery management and a DC motor controller. This board features JST connectors for the racer’s battery, motor output, and sensor input. LiPo battery management charge rate is 500mA. For sensor experimentation, a 3.3-volt Stemma-QT connection is available on-board. The micro-USB connector used for REPL operation, operational status data output, and battery charging. On-board flash memory size is 2MB.

Circuit Playground Express + Displayio. Extend and expand your Circuit Playground projects with a bolt on TFT Gizmo that lets you add a lovely color display in a sturdy and reliable fashion. This PCB looks just like a round TFT breakout but has permanently affixed M3 standoffs that act as mechanical and electrical connections.

PyDev of the Week: Sophy Wong

Wow! Mouse vs Python has Sophy Wong as PyDev of the week!

“This week we welcome Sophy Wong (@sophywong) as our PyDev of the Week! Sophy is a maker who uses CircuitPython for creating wearables. She is also a writer and speaker at Maker events. You can see some of her creations on her Youtube Channel or her website. Let’s take a few moments to get to know her better!”

SmallSats Discord on Adafruit server!

We now have a SmallSats channel on the Discord server. Stop by if ya like to discuss Python in space, and more – https://adafru.it/smallsats

News from around the web!

Thea made another CircuitPython library, WinterbloomVoltageIO. VoltageIO lets you set the output voltage to your DACs instead of having to do the maths to calculate voltage every time. It also lets you do the reverse for ADCs! – GitHub, via Twitter.

Using Apple MacBook Airs and Pros along with Circuit Playgrounds to teach basic coding to get ready for 2 and 3rd grade robotics. From Mike Pitcher, Director of Academic Technologies at The University of Texas at El Paso, and Apple Distinguished Educator 2017 – Twitter.

Digi-Key booth at Maker Faire Rome with Monster M4sk! – Twitter.

GeekMom’s incredible outfit – Twitter.

Super cute ADABOT Operation-like game with Circuit Playground is heading to Maker Faire Korea – Instagram.

Sneak peek of Nithin’s Halloween costume using MONSTER M4SK. Nithin’s daughter is going as a donut, so naturally… Nithin tagging along as coffee ?? – Twitter.

This dress was created for the Reinvent the Runway 2019 show in Rocklin, California. It’s made of plastic grocery bags and bubble wrap, and powered by Adafruit’s Circuit Playground Express. The dress is motion sensitive and puppeted using fishing line connected to bracelets made of plastic soda bottle rings. The necklace is also made of soda bottle rings, and the fascinator hat is a small turtle made of a soda bottle. The theme was Science, and all the entries needed to be made of recycled materials, Post and YouTube.

Bill and team made a cool sign at Improving – Instagram.

Sayanne is using an Adafruit nRF52 BLE board and built some demos with a client-side app with Chrome browser’s Web BLE support. You can read the changing GATT characteristics from a BLE device to the browser! Twitter and YouTube.

Giant axe now ready for Battle Royale – Instagram.

The Chroma Touch LED glove – Instagram.

Nordic Online Power Profiler –

“The tool is based on a model of measured values, and is not showing the actual measurement. The results are therefore estimates of the expected value. It is meant for evaluation purposes only, and will not give the exact numbers in every use case. Testing shows that the estimated average current is typically within 5% of the actual value for the reference parts. The device to device variations will add to this inaccuracy. Please refer to the nRF52 Product Specification for expected min/max values for the different current components.”

Here is the last ESP32 hardware design guidelines posted on the Espressif site – PDF.

How to make a pretty prompt in Windows Terminal with Powerline, Nerd Fonts, Cascadia Code, WSL, and oh-my-posh – Scott Hanselman.

Nyan cat earrings – Instagram.

There is a new Arduino IDE (alpha), called the Arduino Pro IDE, that has support for additional languages other than C++. Is this one of the first moves towards supporting Python? – Arduino blog.

Leo’s Iron Man gloves – Instagram.

Episode 3 of season 7 from The Blacklist has some Adafruit gear – Twitter.

Anaconda turns your Sublime Text 3 into a fully featured Python development IDE – damnwidget.github.io/anaconda

Dash is an API Documentation Browser and Code Snippet Manager. Dash stores snippets of code and instantly searches offline documentation sets for 200+ APIs, 100+ cheat sheets and more. You can even generate your own docsets or request docsets to be included – Dash. Hmm, if there is interest maybe we’ll see about adding CircuitPython?

Andrey Vlasovskikh – The Story of Features Coming in Python 3.8 and Beyond – YouTube.

Pioneering open source drones and robocars – Chris Anderson, former Editor-in-Chief of WIRED and a true pioneer in the world of drones, joined the Changelog show to talk about his hobby gone wrong, how he started 3D Robotics, DIY Drones, and Dronecode. They also talked about his newest passion, DIY Robocars – changelog.com

ET (Don’t) Phone Home, internet access and privacy list of things device descriptions should contain, sorta like food ingredient labels, by Jacques Mattheij via Twitter.

M-Hair: Creating Novel Tactile Feedback by Augmenting the Body Hair to Respond to Magnetic Fields – YouTube.

There might be up to 212,000 people using Pebbles, as part of the Rebble Alliance, iFixit and Twitter. “Rebble is saving thousands of gadgets from the bin and building a real community around dogged longevity.”

The Lines of Code That Changed Everything: Apollo 11, the JPEG, the first pop-up ad, and 33 other bits of software that have transformed our world – slate.com

Terumasa Ikeda’s art looks like it came out of the Matrix – terumasa-ikeda.com and YouTube.

All Creative Work is Derivative – YouTube.

Historical Python posts from over 13 years ago, Artima forums via Twitter.

What’s New In Python 3.8 – Python.org

Complete Guide to Imports in Python: Absolute, Relative, and More. How to plan your code so imports are clear and clean – Python for the Lab.

Running ML on edge devices is growing in importance as applications continue to demand lower latency. It is also a foundational element for privacy-preserving techniques such as federated learning. As of PyTorch 1.3, PyTorch supports an end-to-end workflow from Python to deployment on iOS and Android – PyTorch Mobile.

daudin is a UNIX command-line shell based on Python – GitHub.

An instance of your terminal in your browser – cast-sh.

If you like this newsletter, you’ll probably also like the Python Foundation newsletter too, the latest one is here!

Speaking of! Special thanks to Naomi Ceder, chair of the Python Foundation Board of directors, for helping us always as we grow this community together, AND, for hanging out while we showed Python on hardware demos at dinner last week ??

CircuitPython Weekly meeting for October 21, 2019 on YouTube.

#ICYDNCI What was the most popular, most clicked link, in last week’s newsletter? Adafruit Feather STM32F405 Express.

Coming soon

E-Ink GIZMO, getting close!

nRF52840 ItsyBitsy coming soon!

CircuitPython LOGO Turtle ?? – YouTube.

Speaking of TURTLE … check out these snowflakes made with TURTLE!

Pepper’s ghost, hologram-like, with a PyPortal and BLINKA – Twitter.

New Learn Guides!

PyPortal IoT Plant Monitor with AWS IoT and CircuitPython from Brent Rubell

A CircuitPython BLE Remote Control On/Off Switch from rdagger

CircuitPython NeoPixel Library Using SPI from Carter Nelson

Updated Guides – Now With More Python!

You can use CircuitPython libraries on Raspberry Pi! We’re updating all of our CircuitPython guides to show how to wire up sensors to your Raspberry Pi, and load the necessary CircuitPython libraries to get going using them with Python. We’ll be including the updates here so you can easily keep track of which sensors are ready to go. Check it out!

Adafruit MAX31856 Universal Thermocouple Amplifier

CircuitPython Libraries!

CircuitPython support for hardware continues to grow. We are adding support for new sensors and breakouts all the time, as well as improving on the drivers we already have. As we add more libraries and update current ones, you can keep up with all the changes right here!

For the latest drivers, download the Adafruit CircuitPython Library Bundle.

If you’d like to contribute, CircuitPython libraries are a great place to start. Have an idea for a new driver? File an issue on CircuitPython! Interested in helping with current libraries? Check out this GitHub issue on CircuitPython for an overview of the State of the CircuitPython Libraries, updated each week. We’ve included open issues from the library issue lists, and details about repo-level issues that need to be addressed. We have a guide on contributing to CircuitPython with Git and Github if you need help getting started. You can also find us in the #circuitpython channel on the Adafruit Discord. Feel free to contact Kattni (@kattni) with any questions.

You can check out this list of all the CircuitPython libraries and drivers available.

The current number of CircuitPython libraries is 192!

New Libraries!

Here’s this week’s new CircuitPython libraries:

• Adafruit_CircuitPython_LSM303AGR_Mag
• Adafruit_CircuitPython_LSM303DLH_Mag
• Adafruit_CircuitPython_LSM303_Accel
• Adafruit_CircuitPython_MPU6050

Updated Libraries!

Here’s this week’s updated CircuitPython libraries:

• Adafruit_CircuitPython_MCP4725
• Adafruit_CircuitPython_RGB_Display
• Adafruit_CircuitPython_Pixie
• Adafruit_CircuitPython_IL0373
• Adafruit_CircuitPython_ESP32SPI
• Adafruit_CircuitPython_BNO055
• Adafruit_CircuitPython_EPD
• Adafruit_CircuitPython_turtle
• Adafruit_CircuitPython_AWS_IOT

PyPI Download Stats!

We’ve written a special library called Adafruit Blinka that makes it possible to use CircuitPython Libraries on Raspberry Pi and other compatible single-board computers. Adafruit Blinka and all the CircuitPython libraries have been deployed to PyPI for super simple installation on Linux! Here are the top 10 CircuitPython libraries downloaded from PyPI in the last week, including the total downloads for those libraries:

What is the team up to!

Bryan

A fun and interesting thing I did this week was prototyping the tester circuit and writing the tester code for the mpu6050 gyro and accelerometer. Each individual sensor breakout, development board, pi hat or bonnet, fancy tft display, featherwing, or other electronic dodad that we manufacture is tested before it gets sent out. To do this, our eagle-eyed staff deploy a phalanx of test jigs to verify each item coming off the assembly line to make sure it’s up to snuff.

Dan

I’m still working on the storage infrastructure needed for BLE bonding. The actual bonding code is fairly simple; it’s prepping for it that’s been more complicated. I’ve removed unused code from the CircuitPython for chips and boards that are supported in MicroPython but that we don’t support. This reduces confusion about what we do support, and makes it easier to search the code base without encountering irrelevant files.

Kattni

This week has seen more Raspberry Python updates. I’ve been working through updating more guides with CircuitPython and Python on Linux usage. As I update, I have been testing breakouts and more on Raspberry Pi; this week I tested MAX31856, ADXL345 and Pixie LEDs. We recently saw the addition of a basic driver for the MCP9600 thermocouple amplifier. I spent the second half of the week working on implementing the rest of the features available for that chip, including alert configuration. You’ll be able to use CircuitPython and Python on Linux to set up four separate alerts on the chip. Once documented and reviewed, the driver will be available in the CircuitPython library bundle and on PyPI. Keep an eye out that and more updated guides!

Lucian

This week I’ve been working on the internals of UART, adjusting the tools ST provides to be more tolerant of unexpected data and soft reboots. It’s been unpleasantly resilient, due to bugs that impede debugger use, but should be wrapped up soon. Next, I’ll be working on implementing PWM, which should enable more LED related library use, and cleanup for the port as a whole.

Melissa

Last week I finished up updating all of the color TFT breakout guides with a new Python section so that they can be used in the User Space on the Raspberry Pi. The pages are mirrored to all of the guides, so you can check them out here and here. This week I’ve been heads down in eInk Displays. I’ve been working on updating guides for using eInk displays with displayio instead of the EPD library. I’ve also been working on some demo code for the Raspberry Pi.

Scott

Last week I continued my BLE saga by getting Connections working again after merging the Central and Peripheral roles together. The big thing here is that the services themselves are now defined once and used for both sides of the connection. This will make it easier to establish and maintain services and characteristics.

Upcoming events!

Hacktoberfest is open to everyone in the global community. Whether you’re a developer, student learning to code, event host, or company of any size, you can help drive growth of open source and make positive contributions to an ever-growing community. All backgrounds and skill levels are encouraged to complete the challenge – https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com

October is Open Hardware Month @ Open Source Hardware Association.

“October is Open Hardware Month! Check out the Open Hardware Month website. Host an event, find a local event, or certify your hardware to support Open Source Hardware. We are providing resources and asking you, the community, to host small, local events in the name of open source hardware. Tell us about your October event by filling out the form below. Your event will be featured on OSHWA’s Open Hardware Month page (provided you have followed OSHWA’s rules listed on the “Do’s and Don’ts” page).”

Read more, Tweet for speakers in 2020, and Open Hardware Month @ http://ohm.oshwa.org/

We’ve been posting EACH DAY, ALL MONTH, check ’em out!

• Open Hardware Month Hack Chat at Hackaday.io – Day 21, 10/21/2019.
• Parallax Open-source hardware – Day 20, 10/20/2019.
• Growing Your Open Business – A Digital Meetup for Open Hardware Month – Day 19, 10/19/2019.
• Open-source hardware at the Museum of Modern Art, posted on 10/19/2019 – Day 18, 10/18/2019.
• Open Hardware Licenses CC BY-SA, CERN, TAPR … – Day 17, 10/17/2019.
• Open Source Hardware Month at SparkFun – Day 16, 10/16/2019.
• How many Open-Source Prusa 3D printers are there? Posted on 10/19/2019 – Day 15, 10/15/2019.
• The RepRap Project Self-Replicating Open-Source 3D Printing – Day 14, 10/13/2019.
• The first 2 orders at Adafruit… now up to 2,161,166 orders – Day 13, 10/13/2019.
• Photos of the first Arduino (2005) – Day 12, 10/12 2019.
• In 2010 there were 13 Open Source Hardware companies that were making $1 million or more… – Day 11, 10/11/2019
• Opening Hardware 2010 at Eyebeam in NYC – Day 10, 10/10/2019.
• The Open Source Gift Guide, the early years – Day 9, 10/9/2019 (posted it on 10/10/2019, whoops)
• Before the iPhone, before the Raspberry Pi, before Amazon Echo Show, there was Chumby – Day 8, 10/8/2019.
• Mitch Altman Open-source hardware pioneer – Day 7, 10/7/2019.
• The Open Source logo(s) – Day 6, 10/6/2019.
• Open Source Hardware events all month long, EVENTS! – Day 5, 10/5/2019.
• Open Source Hardware Certifications and more! – Day 4, 10/4/2019.
• Teuthis Open Source MP3 Player 2001 – Daisy by Raphael Abrams – Day 3, 10/3/2019.
• What is the Open-Source Hardware Definition? – Day 2, 10/2/2019.
• Open hardware summit – Limor “Ladyada” Fried keynote 2010 – Day 1, 10/1/2019.

October 28–31, 2019. Be part of the ML revolution. Santa Clara, California, USA. TensorFlow is powering everything from data centers to edge devices, across industries from finance to advanced healthcare. And now, with TensorFlow 2.0 and the evolving ecosystem of tools and libraries, it’s doing it all so much easier – TensorFlow World.

Hackaday Superconference is November 15th, 16th, and 17th in Pasadena, California, USA. The Hackaday Superconference is returning for another 3 full days of technical talks, badge hacking, and hands-on workshops: Eventbrite & hackaday.io

April 15-23, 2020, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – The PyCon 2020 conference, which will take place in Pittsburgh, is the largest annual gathering for the community using and developing the open-source Python programming language. It is produced and underwritten by the Python Software Foundation, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing and promoting Python. Through PyCon, the PSF advances its mission of growing the international community of Python programmers – PyCon 2020.

Latest releases

CircuitPython’s stable release is 4.1.0 and its unstable release is 5.0.0-alpha.4. New to CircuitPython? Start with our Welcome to CircuitPython Guide.

20191021 is the latest CircuitPython library bundle.

v1.11 is the latest MicroPython release. Documentation for it is here.

3.8.0 is the latest Python release.

1433 Stars Like CircuitPython? Star it on GitHub!

Call for help – CircuitPython messaging to other languages!

We recently posted on the Adafruit blog about bringing CircuitPython messaging to other languages, one of the exciting features of CircuitPython 4.x is translated control and error messages. Native language messages will help non-native English speakers understand what is happening in CircuitPython even though the Python keywords and APIs will still be in English. If you would like to help, please post to the main issue on GitHub and join us on Discord.

We made this graphic with translated text, we could use your help with that to make sure we got the text right, please check out the text in the image – if there is anything we did not get correct, please let us know. Dan sent me this handy site too.

jobs.adafruit.com – Find a dream job, find great candidates!

jobs.adafruit.com has returned and folks are posting their skills (including CircuitPython) and companies are looking for talented makers to join their companies – from Digi-Key, to Hackaday, Microcenter, Raspberry Pi and more.

14,522 thanks!

The Adafruit Discord community, where we do all our CircuitPython development in the open, reached over 14,522 humans, thank you! Join today! https://adafru.it/discord

ICYMI – In case you missed it

The wonderful world of Python on hardware! This is our first video-newsletter-podcast that we’ve started! The news comes from the Python community, Discord, Adafruit communities and more. It’s part of the weekly newsletter, then we have a segment on ASK an ENGINEER and this is the video slice from that! The complete Python on Hardware weekly videocast playlist is here.

This video podcast is on iTunes, YouTube, IGTV (Instagram TV), and XML.

Weekly community chat on Adafruit Discord server CircuitPython channel – Audio / Podcast edition – Audio from the Discord chat space for CircuitPython, meetings are usually Mondays at 2pm ET, this is the audio version on iTunes, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and XML feed.

And lastly, we are working up a one-spot destination for all things podcast-able here – podcasts.adafruit.com

Codecademy “Learn Hardware Programming with CircuitPython”

Codecademy, an online interactive learning platform used by more than 45 million people, has teamed up with the leading manufacturer in STEAM electronics, Adafruit Industries, to create a coding course, “Learn Hardware Programming with CircuitPython”. The course is now available in the Codecademy catalog.

Python is a highly versatile, easy to learn programming language that a wide range of people, from visual effects artists in Hollywood to mission control at NASA, use to quickly solve problems. But you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to accomplish amazing things with it. This new course introduces programmers to Python by way of a microcontroller — CircuitPython — which is a Python-based programming language optimized for use on hardware.

CircuitPython’s hardware-ready design makes it easier than ever to program a variety of single-board computers, and this course gets you from no experience to working prototype faster than ever before. Codecademy’s interactive learning environment, combined with Adafruit’s highly rated Circuit Playground Express, present aspiring hardware hackers with a never-before-seen opportunity to learn hardware programming seamlessly online.

Whether for those who are new to programming, or for those who want to expand their skill set to include physical computing, this course will have students getting familiar with Python and creating incredible projects along the way. By the end, students will have built their own bike lights, drum machine, and even a moisture detector that can tell when it’s time to water a plant.

Visit Codecademy to access the Learn Hardware Programming with CircuitPython course and Adafruit to purchase a Circuit Playground Express.

Codecademy has helped more than 45 million people around the world upgrade their careers with technology skills. The company’s online interactive learning platform is widely recognized for providing an accessible, flexible, and engaging experience for beginners and experienced programmers alike. Codecademy has raised a total of $43 million from investors including Union Square Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Thrive Capital, Naspers, Yuri Milner and Richard Branson, most recently raising its $30 million Series C in July 2016.

Contribute!

The CircuitPython Weekly Newsletter is a CircuitPython community-run newsletter emailed every Tuesday. The complete archives are here. It highlights the latest CircuitPython related news from around the web including Python and MicroPython developments. To contribute, edit next week’s draft on GitHub and submit a pull request with the changes. Join our Discord or post to the forum for any further questions.