CircuitPython and MicroPython - Making Microcontroller Making Easier

Getting into making is awesome, especially for kids, but there are some barriers.

For a start, a lot of the technologies take some setting up unless you get a done-for-you kit (looking at you Raspberry Pi) or you are expected to learn a compiled language like C++ (as in the Arduino) or C#.

Grownups, the ones with a tech streak or at least patience, it's not so bad, but for people coming in cold, it's friction we can do without.

Enter Python.

Python is pupil perfection

Python is an interpreted language, meaning you can enter commands and see the results right away, plus the syntax is very human readable. Formatting is enforced so it's more difficult to make spaghetti code.

Recently Python has been ported to Microcontrollers, first via a kickstarter, and then by the community, and most recently, Adafruit with their own boards.

Plug and play

This last development is the best yet, because the Adafruit ecosystem will make it easier than ever.

Plug in your CircuitPlayground or Gemma board and it appears as a drive. Edit the code with any editor, hit reset, and it executes. No software to install, no toolchain, no IDE, just code and blinky lights :)

Example code

This lights up the included neopixels on the CircuitPlayground board:

import board
import neopixel
import time

pixels = neopixel.NeoPixel(board.NEOPIXEL, 10)

while 1:
    pixels[0] = (1, 0, 0)
    pixels[2] = (0, 1, 0)
    pixels[5] = (0, 0, 1)
    time.sleep(1)
    pixels[1] = (2, 0, 0)
    pixels[3] = (0, 2, 0)
    pixels[6] = (0, 0, 2)
    time.sleep(1)