I recently came across a neat embedded project, MicroPython, which is a port of the Python language to ARM microcontrollers. The possibilities offered by this are amazing in my opinion. Python is used extensively by folks outside of the embedded world, software engineers, data scientists etc. By allowing embedded system programming in Python, MicroPython opens the doors for a large audience to try their hands at tinkering hardware. In addition Python being an interpreted language, you can execute any code on the device interactively, through a serial prompt on your host machine. Again this frees up the time spent in compiling code, writing FW etc, as one can simply try out new things on the device on the fly.
Super excited about this project, I decided to order a PyBoard. This is a STM32 based reference board for the MicroPython project. The MicroPython is an open source project and has been ported to a number of platforms, some of them are listed here. Since the PyBoard is the reference platform, I decided to start with this, as I figured this would have a better level of community support and compatibility. Couple of days later, I had received my PyBoard, neatly packaged in an anti-ESD bag. My first thought on seeing it was it sure is small 😊. After unpacking the board and soldering a bunch of headers, it was good to go.
Super excited about this project, I decided to order a PyBoard. This is a STM32 based reference board for the MicroPython project. The MicroPython is an open source project and has been ported to a number of platforms, some of them are listed here. Since the PyBoard is the reference platform, I decided to start with this, as I figured this would have a better level of community support and compatibility. Couple of days later, I had received my PyBoard, neatly packaged in an anti-ESD bag. My first thought on seeing it was it sure is small 😊. After unpacking the board and soldering a bunch of headers, it was good to go.
Hello, World!
Every programmer starts with a Hello, World! program, or in embedded systems, a blinky LED program. On the pyboard, this is the simple script below:
And this is the pyboard running it...
And this is the pyboard running it...
More experiments = More fun
After the blinky LED program, I tried to interface the pyboard with an 8x8 led matrix, driven by a max7219. I found a library to control an led matrix with MicroPython here, but since it could only draw single pixels, I decided to extend it with a font to draw characters. If you want to tweak the library, the datasheet for the max7129 can be found here. Here's the led matrix displaying a simple hello world program...
The library and the test program can be found here.
Future experiments
Currently I'm in the process of writing some more libraries for the pyboard to interface with various modules I have. Planning to create something useful with the pyboard in the coming weeks...
