 Python on hardware time we have a newsletter sign up for a different daily comm we don't spam We don't harvest your emails. We don't do anything that you can upscry many time But what it does give you is a once a week newsletter that is the best Python on hardware newsletter out there So micro Python 1.16 is released you looked at it I think the cool feature that everyone's talking about is that like command line thing to control The cool thing about this yeah, and people was cool. The cool thing about this is how fast we were able to keep up to date with upstream so There there's there's many reasons for this multi layered like a snake I think snakes have layers, right? So we Scott did a massive push before he just did he won on vacation of Merging three years worth of micro Python updates. I think we were on like 109 or one Wait or something we merged up to 115 and Damian who's the maintainer of upstream micro Python was like I want to do more smaller more common releases more often releases Which is good because it means it's actually easier to keep up It's tougher to merge six months of stuff It's easier to merge a month of stuff just because there's not as many changes and tweaks to do so the 116 Release we were on 115 116 came out like a week ago and within a week Jepler was able to do a PR to catch us up and this is cool because now as We're adding stuff to circuit Python like Jepler found a cool way to Also compress some of the flash by like the way we store objects and like having an extension to the infrastructure whatever You know cool hack and historically if we were like six versions behind on micro Python The chances of us getting that into upstream is it just gets tougher and tougher because there's so many things that could be Like, you know forked apart Bringing it closer together means that Damian is on the PR and is giving suggestions for how can we add this Optimization and then get it upstream Quickly like cherry picked into mainstream, which is something we've wanted to do We've made many contributions to micro Python, but they've had to be it's really been very like surgical how to extract that contribution Now we can collaborate so much better So this is really great for micro Python because they get all of our improvements We have the three core devs working on it circuit Python day-in day-out and they can benefit and also we can benefit from improvements that the micro Python team is doing and I think it's kind of added to a more harmonious Co-living situation. I mean like we've always loved micro Python, but I think They've always been like hey we want more of your improvements, but because you're behind it's harder for us to it's only 13 Commits off as of yesterday, which is awesome, so I'm gonna call it so the ports are still separate, right? So like we support we don't have like ESP 32 for example We have ESP 32 s2 and samdi 21 and we have you know our pay This is why we did that because they're micro Python if you want to use that particular chip use micro Python for that But the core stuff we have other things like if it has to support us be yeah We have a different we haven't it's sort of like Linux, right? You can have some people like Debbie and some people like mint and some people like a bunch you and some people like Slackware and some people like gen 2 or arch or whatever and the kernel is the same But the stuff around it how you actually interface with the kernel may be different But you still want to have it all every distribution ideally is on mainline kernel and that's not true all the time sometimes Distributions have split off of the main kernel and they have changes They don't get the mainstream and so it's like it starts to get a little wobbly where it's like you'll end up distro Which is on Linux, you know three and one's on Linux four and one's on Linux five like it can it can really diverge So having having a similar core means even though the packaging is different The core functionality and improvements can be shared So this is a really good thing for the community even the people aren't doing core Micro Python or circuit Python. I think everyone agrees. This is a good thing So I'm gonna call it call it I think in the beginning when we were doing like circuit Python people like why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? but now as the cores are so as they're like only a few commits behind Each release and it's getting easier and easier if you look at what our team is doing They're supporting open source in the best way They're adding and contributing things are getting added upstream. They're getting cherry-picked. They're getting added We're picking out things we're adding it and then we're also supporting micro Python financially So unless I get told different I think we're the largest public sponsor financially of micro Python So this works open source can work and you know a lot of people are they'll call something open source It's not there's a lot of folks that are doing open source and they say it can't work or they stop doing open source But there is a way to make it work. It just takes a very Curious group of people that's dedicated that maybe had some things happen to them in the life So there's more in the newsletter, but that's what that's the thing that's really cool about 116 Yes, it's cool that we merge 116, but what's really cool is how fast we merge 116 So anyways congrats the entire team and I think Scott's in chat. So give Scott a shout out Python visual studio There is beta of Python 3 1 0 See Python check that out We have a bunch of keyboard stuff because this is all keyboard all the time for a lot of the things that we're doing and If you look at the newsletter and you want to get an idea of like where Python and hardware is going or just electronics Look at it quickly and scroll down and then look at the project that you want to do And it's like wow like this is that easy to do now. These are all the different things So speaking of this week my pick of the week from newsletter and Python on hardware Are you picked up out? I do is the latest hack space issue. So this just came out And there's a few things in this issue. I wanted to mention First up congrats Simone on the cover Pico and in the things that are circuit Python and Python and hardware related this week Lady Aida First up. There's this little Halloween pumpkin. Yeah, it's loopy Spoopy poopy spooky poopy circuit Python and circuit Python it talks when you go near and everything and then Hack space are fast and it's like Ben's a really good author. He's the editor-in-chief as well This was circuit Python a microfiber Python This was using the libraries of circuit Python combining the hardware support of micro Python Yeah, so this is based off of the work that of course Melissa has been doing with Blinka She's just been rocking it out Blinka is our Compatibility layer that we originally wrote for micro Python But like nobody really used it and so we sort of diverged the code and started focusing more on C Python support So that you could use our circuit Python libraries on Linux computers like the Raspberry Pi or the Beagle bone or the onion Omega or the Banana Pi and also on desktop computers running C Python using like a USB dongle to convert USB commands into you know GPO commands But then when the Pico came out there are some people who are using micro Python But wanted to use our libraries and there was like I think people were like I don't know Why can't I use the circuit Python libraries on micro Python? We're like you can with Blinka and people like well doesn't work and we're like oops It should and so Melissa went in cleaned it up and published how to do it And we're gonna make it even better. It's a little it's a little bit unusual how to do it because of the file system stuff With micro Python you have to use their file system manager, but we're going to hopefully make it even easier Again, we would love for micro Python to have our API, but since they don't we can do the second best thing Which is offer a shim yeah, okay, and that is this week Python harmonious