 It's that time again. This is Katnie with your weekly Python on Hardware News. Every week, we put together the Python from Microcontrollers newsletter. It is available through AdafruitDaily.com. Head over to sign up and see all of the past and current newsletters. Or tune in each week to hear what's going on. Adafruit is continuing to operate as an essential business under New York City Executive Order to provide assistance with the COVID-19 outbreak. Most employees are working remotely, while a few are working in the Adafruit factory to help manufacture and ship desperately needed PPE to the surrounding area and beyond. This week, LaMoure was appointed to the Small Business Sector Advisory Council by the New York City Mayor. This council will serve as critical links to disseminate information about reopening and provide guidance to shape the city's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Adafruit thanks the mayor for the opportunity to help restart the New York economy. Adafruit continues to manufacture face shields for distribution through the Adafruit shop. We are also sourcing materials made in the USA that can be made into masks and are working on engineering simple ways to make it into masks for all who need them. CircuitPython 5.4.0 BetaZero was released on Monday and has many new features and improvements including sleep support while time.sleep, RGB matrix support on the STM32F4, AESIO added for C-level AES, display IO enabled on the STM32H7 boards, and much more. Seven new boards were added including the Simmel and the Teensie 4.1. Scott streamed some of the latest work intended for the 5.4.0 release including a demonstration of lower power usage by shutting down the microcontroller during sleep. With the ESP32S2 finally in our hands we've been working towards getting CircuitPython running on it. Scott live streamed getting the CircuitPython Rebel and wiring up DigitalIO to get an LED blinking. Brandon Ashworth has also gotten an LED to blink on the ESP32S2 using CircuitPython. The Teensie 4.1 microcontroller board has been released. Sales have opened up for the new development board. It features improvements over the Teensie 4.0 board to include additional pins, a microSD slot, and a 10100 Ethernet 6 pin interface. Teensie 4.1 also includes a USB host port broken out to a 5 pin through hole header on the inside of the PCB as was done on the 3.5 3.6 versions. The board is compatible with CircuitPython 5.4.0 beta zero and higher. Check out pjrc.com for more technical specs and purchasing. Microsoft Developer presents a series of 44 free YouTube videos entitled Python for Beginners. Microsoft states probably the largest hurdle when learning any new programming language is simply knowing where to get started. That is why we, Chris and Susan, decided to create this series about Python for Beginners. Even though we don't cover everything there is to know about Python in the course, we want to make sure we give you a foundation on programming in Python, starting from common everyday code and scenarios. At the end of the course, you'll be able to go learn on your own, for example, with docs, tutorials, or books. Check it out on YouTube. Microsoft has started a Discord server specifically aimed at Python. The server follows the Microsoft open source code of conduct. The Microsoft Python server can be joined by visiting aka.ms-python-discord. CircuitPython received a native library to drive RGB matrices last month using the SAM-D51 and NRF 52840 microcontrollers. This week, Lady A detested out support in the library for STM32F405. There is now a plugin for Atom with support for serial outputs, Python REPL, and plotting of data using CircuitPython. The plugin contains the code from the F-sync-on-save package to ensure data is flushed to the device immediately after saving, therefore preventing loss or corruption of data when working with CircuitPython devices. The plugin should be compatible with Windows and Linux as the serial port library should be cross-platform. The maintainer is open to any form of feedback in the form of GitHub issues or pinging Joseph in the CircuitPython channel on the Adafruit Discord server. Check out the source code on github at github.com slash j-o-s dash b. The make code for microbit beta now includes support for Python. The beta is available for testing. Visit makecode.microbit.org slash beta to give it a try. Cycle match on Twitter posts cyberduck, a self-contained computer that can edit and run Python files with a USB keyboard input and a display, and it's shaped like a disaster recovery duck. Key features include USB keyboard input, a display for showing output, a text editor for creating and editing Python code, and a Rebelite command line for entering Python commands. The project deliberately takes bits and pizzas from others to work. Check out Twitter for details and links. Adafruit has always been an open source hardware company predating the open source hardware association certification process. We have finally finished submitting all of our hardware to Oshawa for certification as open source. This week 102 new boards were certified including the Circuit Playground Express, Circuit Playground Bluefruit, and the Hollowing M4 Express. Build a serverless Martian weather display with Circuit Python and AWS Lambda. Visit idk.dev for details. Winterbloom is working on the new Hostess USB featherwing host board which will be Circuit Python compatible. It will have a SAMD 21 microcontroller chip and a USB-A port. It'll work with USB MIDI and HID devices for now, but it'll be open source for simple addition of other features. Follow Thea Valkyrie on Twitter to follow the process. Circuit Python Neo Sprite is a library for updating NeoPixel arrays from sprite files such as bitmaps. The vector IO library builds on a feather M4 Express and draws concrete shapes that are composed into a vector shape which is put into a display IO group for display. Kinger North posted a number of video tutorials on Circuit Python including random numbers and timers using servos and analog in mapping in PWM. Cedar Grove Studios posts to Twitter a large mint tin LED clock. It features battery backup and a real-time clock module with automatic daylight saving adjustments. It uses a rotary encoder for setting time, date, brightness, and enabling or disabling the ticking sound all in Circuit Python. Cedar Grove Studios also posts to Twitter a sneak peek of the enclosure base for a project, a restoration of an heirloom cuckoo clock incorporating original antique whistles and gong activated by servos and a solenoid. It uses an Adafruit Cricut controlled by a Pi badge and Circuit Python with a custom Stemma host feather wing. The clock uses the Cedar Grove Studios Clock Builder Library, a collection of modules and libraries for building standalone RTC clocks. Check out Hackster for a donkey car simulator with RC controller. It uses the Robohat MM1 and Circuit Python. Dave Bricchetti built two versions of a smart thermostat, one with a Raspberry Pi and the other using Circuit Python on an Adafruit Circuit Playground Express. Brian Enigma posts to Twitter a quarantine day counter using Adafruit Pi Portal. SimpleTest is a Python library that helps write and run tests on Circuit Python. It aims to mimic as much as possible the PiTest API. Redraw and GitHub posts the project to blink an LED when a satellite is passing by using a WiIMOS D1 Mini and MicroPython. Create a Circuit Python build environment for presence on Windows 10 with Windows subsystem for Linux. Check out an example of Circuit Python that allows a NINA B302 to communicate with an HTTP world time server via a Wi-Fi co-processor based on NINA W102 in 802.11 mode. Christopher posts an eye-opening comparison of using join versus plus to combine strings in Python. Check it out on TowardDataScience.com. The number of Circuit Python supported microcontrollers and single board computers grows every week. This week there were seven new boards added to Circuit Python including the OpenMVH7 and the STM32F746 discovery. Are you interested in adding a new board to Circuit Python? Check out the Adafruit Learn system for a series of guides about getting your board added to CircuitPython and CircuitPython.org. There are four new Python on hardware related guides in the Adafruit Learn system this week including create high fidelity light paintings with an Adafruit Clue, Circuit Python, and DotStar LEDs in this guide from Phil B. And practice your music with a Clue metronome including customizable tempo and time signature as well as a 3D printed stand to go with it in this guide from John Park. The current number of Circuit Python libraries is 227. There are no new libraries this week but there are many updated libraries. As always visit CircuitPython.org slash libraries to download the latest bundle. Included in this week's update from the Circuit Python team Dan has been finishing up the Adafruit BLE services library. It provides BLE services that work with the Blue Fruit Playground app. He has a Circuit Python program that communicates with the app in the same way that the original Arduino UF2s did. The app is not the only way to use the Adafruit services library. You'll be able to use the library as a BLE central as well to get sensor data or control NeoPixels or DotStars. The library required some changes to the packet buffer class core Circuit Python BLE support. He'd finally finish those changes earlier this week after some false starts. Jeff helped with the setup of WebLate to make it easier for the community to contribute translations of Circuit Python. Please help us out by adding or improving translations. He started a new project this week to create a version of Adafruit SD card which is written in C instead of Python. We hope that this new version will have higher performance and leave more memory free for your Python code and objects. Initial results for a single file on a single card show that reading a large file 4,096 bytes at a time became about 40% faster. However, additional testing on multiple SD cards and Circuit Python boards is indicated. While working on the code, he was inserting and removing the SD card repeatedly. He thinks mechanical stress was probably the reason this card broke in two, but software bugs are not entirely ruled out. Melissa focused mostly on adding iSquared C protocol to the Adafruit Circuit Python BitBangIO library. This was fairly difficult because it seemed any existing examples implementing this were written just slightly differently or largely incomplete. One of the sources that she found most helpful was looking at how Circuit Python had implemented it and using that as a base worked pretty well. She also checked the output while running hardware iSquared C with her logic analyzer and compared that to the output and she was able to get some good data when she tested with the BME 280. We've had a call for Circuit Python translations out for some time. This week we implemented the open source project web late, making it even easier to add or improve translations. Sign in with an existing account such as GitHub, Google or Facebook and start contributing through a simple web interface. Python 2020 online continues with many talks, tutorials and more already posted. Visit us.pycon.org slash 2020 slash online to find links to all of the available content or sign up for the mailing list to receive updates. Check out talks, tutorials and startup row along with a virtual expo hall. The USA Science and Engineering Festival is to offer their popular XSTEM conference in a virtual format. XSTEM All Access is an engaging entertaining educational and interactive online STEM experience for kids. Presentations will be geared towards a middle school and high school level audience grades 6 to 12, but kids and adults of all ages are welcome to join. The daily presentations will be weekdays, May 13th through 19th 2020 from 1 to 2 p.m. Eastern time. There is no cost to attend. Register on their website USAScienceFestival.org. Virtually Maker Faire featuring makers and projects primarily responding to COVID-19 will be May 23rd 2020. It provides an opportunity for makers to connect, share their projects and talk about what they do and how they do it. It will take place completely online through video sessions over a 24-hour period and as curated collection of maker exhibits. The goal is to help makers present their work to a broader public to gain understanding, support and increasing participation. Visit makerfaire.com for more information. EuroPython 2020 this year will be an online conference from July 23rd to 26 including two conference days with keynotes, talks, lightning talks and poster sessions and two sprint days with multiple sprint teams. Attending the conference days will require a ticket and participating in the sprints will be free. Check out ep2020.europython.eu for details. PyCon AU has announced they are holding PyCon Line AU in August. Check out 2020.pycon.org.au for more information. PyCon India 2020 will be held online from October 3rd through 5th 2020. A call for proposals is now open through the 14th of August. Visit in.pycon.org slash 2020 for details regarding the CFP and the conference. Looking for more Python on hardware all week? Join the Adafruit community on Discord and check out the Help with Circuit Python and Circuit Python channels. We're over 18,000 strong and continuing to grow. You'll find a supportive, positive community filled with like-minded folks. Join at adafru.it slash discord. And that is your Python on hardware news for this week. Visit adafruitdaily.com to subscribe to the newsletter or tune in again next week.