New video! This week in The Factory we show off the new Pulse-Soldering machine we’ll use for future production runs. We also respond to some user-feedback to help make PiicoDev as good as it can be.
This video can also be viewed here
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Awesome video!
One idea to get around the framebuf issue might be to start a fork of Micropython itself - it would allow for lower-level functions to be added (maybe move some functions from Unified into Micropython).
It would be harder to maintain as the list of supported boards grow but might be worth a shot (even just adding some extras such as font scaling etc would be a nice touch)!
Pycom and Pimoroni have their own forks and seems to be working though have stuck to only a few microcontrollers
Pycom(ESP32): GitHub - pycom/pycom-micropython-sigfox: A fork of MicroPython with the ESP32 port customized to run on Pycom's IoT multi-network modules.
Pimoroni(RP2040): GitHub - pimoroni/pimoroni-pico: Libraries and examples to support Pimoroni Pico add-ons in C++ and MicroPython.
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It’s a great suggestion @Liam120347 - it’s easy to see why Adafruit would have forked and make CircuitPython. When you get the make the rules you can do anything!
When we started work on PiicoDev we decided it must remain native MicroPython. We didn’t want to burden beginners with the fork in the road - feeling like they have to choose one over the other without fully understanding what the differences are.
That does create some constraints as we have found here - but overall we think it’s in the best interests of makers everywhere to stay with (and contribute to) the rising tide, rather than create another version that potentially sandboxes users into a custom environment and prevents them from experiencing other useful hardware where drivers are written in standard MicroPython.
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@Michael your comments are spot on (and your videos are terrific!). As a beginner, I appreciate that you are keeping things native to MicroPython. I am finding it relatively easy to work with the code you have created and adapt it to my needs. I am sure as I learn more, it will become easier to work with drivers from other systems, but it is the PiicoDev system that has given me the start.
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