Like Arduino Like Python Check Out Micro Python

My knowledge about electronics and microcontrollers (MCUs) leaves a lot to be desired. My knowledge about computer programming, and Python in particular, leaves even more to be desired. However, if you like MCUs and Python, you might want to take a look at Micro Python, as Im doing tonight.

Micro Python pinout (from Kickstarter)

A Design News article from July 17 that I saw gives a brief overview of Micro Python. One of points of interest for me on this board is that the MCU is from STMicroelectronics. The only other blog post Ive written about an STM board is the June 22 one about the $50 Lab-in-a-box. That board also had an STM32F4 MCU.

"The Micro Python board is based on the STM32F405 Microcontroller. It comes ready for Python programming...running 168MHz, with 1MiB Flash and 192KiB...The Micro Python board has a built-in interface for USB and functions much like a storage device. Programmers can write their Python scripts directly onto the battery-operated board and once stored, the Micro Python board will function entirely independent of a PC...the micro Python board comes pre-loaded with a micro SD slot, four LEDs, a clock that functions in real time, accelerometer, switch, and 30 I/O pins, including USARTS, SPIs, 12C buses, DAC and AC pins, and four powered servo ports...it functions right out of the box, as its pre-installed with Micro Python...What’s really unique about this board isn’t the board itself, but the program upon which it’s based...Python can write functions, execute string processes, write classes, create lists and dictionaries, read and write files, create a generation

Packing Micro Python for shipment (from Kickstarter)

system, execute closures, design list comprehensions, and deal with execution handling. The Micro Python software is a leaner, cleaner version of Python intended for the microcontroller, but it actually works for PCs, too...Micro Python software is already available to the public through the MIT open-source license..."

The development of Micro Python board was completed with funding from a Kickstarter campaign that was successfully funded on December 13, 2013. The campaign generated more than six times the initial funding goal of £15,000 set by its founder, Damien George, an Australian theoretical physicist at the University of Cambridge. In Damiens latest update on the Kickstarter site (June 21), he says they just finished sending out the last of the kits and boards to his Kickstarter supporters. The picture above looks like he had a pretty crowded apartment or house when they were packing everything up for shipment! An interesting Kickstarter side-note is that another campaign on there, SliceCase, leveraged the popularity of Micro Python by offering a case for that board as one of the SliceCase rewards. The SliceCase campaign only asked for £1000 and got 9X the original ask.

Micro Python SliceCase

The SliceCase / Micro Python synergy brings up a revenue opportunity that takes advantage short term trends. In my recent post about Spark.io, two principles I mentioned for the Humboldt tech, innovator, maker and entrepreneur (TIME) community to leverage are (1) focus on emerging technologies and trends (e.g. Python language and the maker movement) and (2) use Kickstarter and similar sites to launch products and gain visibility. In this instance, SliceCase no doubt benefited from the buzz that Micro Python had generated. It would be fun to launch a Humboldt Crowdfunding Entrepreneurs Meetup group, where half the purpose is to take an abundance economy approach (a rising tide floats all boats rather than I want my piece of the pie) to Kickstarter and Indiegogo and people in the Meetup group would help each other become more successful at crowdfunding campaigns. The other half of the groups purpose would be to monitor crowdfunding projects on Kickstarter, Indiegogo and elsewhere, and to quickly and efficiently build crowdfunding campaigns that leverage publicity and successful funding of other crowdfunding campaigns.

The Micro Python is open source. Heres the GitHub project site to check out if thats of interest to you. I was glad I took a look at the GitHub site because it showed me that at least one GitHub site has a wiki component. I know less about GitHub than I do about microcontrollers and Python (sensing a theme here??), but I have several reasons to learn how to use GitHub effectively. One of those reasons is because the Humboldt Laser Harp (HLH) project code repository is being put on GitHub. I like wikis for aggregating and organizing technical information, and Im looking forward to giving the wiki component of GitHub sites a look to see if has benefits for the HLH project.

In addition to finding out about wikis on GitHub, tonights blog post also made me aware of a tech acronym that I either havent seen before (which is hard to believe) or just dont remember. That acronym is MiB. And it doesnt mean "Men in Black." What it does stand for is mebibyte, where mebi is a binary prefix which means 2 to the 20th power. It is apparently used as a more accurate alternative to megabyte (MB). The Wikipedia entry for mebibyte says:

She turned me into a newt!

"1 mebibyte is 1048576bytes...The unit has been accepted for use by all major standards organizations, appears increasingly in scholarly literature and is part of the International System of Quantities. Many Linux distributions use the unit, but the unit has not been widely accepted in the computer industry or popular media."

Micro Python has enough visibility that it was written up in Wired in December 2013, and in June 2014 there was a blurb about it in InfoWorld. With Python currently being "the most popular language for teaching introductory computer science courses at top-ranked U.S. departments," and with a relatively active community on GitHub with 31 contributors, 2544 commits and 1082 stars, the Micro Python project stands a decent chance of building critical mass and being around for a few years. Lastly, if youre interested in learning more about the creator of Micro Python, theres a Hack A Day interview with him from November 2013.

If you want to play with a Micro Python board, you can sign up on the projects website, although I didnt see any estimated shipping date for people who werent Kickstarter supporters.

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Electronic Light Orchestra The Humboldt Laser Harp Project Launches! Part 1

Yay! The Humboldt Laser Harp microcontroller (MCU) project officially launched today. This Part 1 post about the project will give a short introduction, then Ill cover some more of the details in tomorrows post.

Ever since the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group was started back in May of this year, Ive wanted to have a couple people from the Group get together and collaborate on an MCU project. It didnt matter too much what it was, I just wanted to get the example and tradition of people coming up with a project, designing the hardware and software, figuring out how to get the components and other resources need to build the project, then debugging the first version and making iterative improvements until we had a pretty cool or interesting result.

Laser harp designed for crowd interaction

As Ive written this blog and during the biweekly Humboldt Microcontrollers Group meetings, Ive been suggesting various topics to try and get a couple people interested in one of them to the point where a project group (even just two people) would form. What I was sort of doing was throwing MCU projects against the kitchen cupboards or wall(?) like spaghetti to see if theyd stick. And one finally stuck -- at least to the point where three of us met today to determine if we wanted to actually start working together on an MCU project. And the answer to that question was, "Yes."

Laser harp with PVC pipe frame

So, Id like to introduce you to the Humboldt Laser Harp (HLH). It is the first MCU electronic musical instrument in the Electronic Light Orchestra of Humboldt County. Maybe we should call it the Humboldt Electronic Light Orchestra (HELO) so people dont get us confused with the band ELO (Electric Light Orchestra). Ill go into more detail about why the light orchestra part of the name will be appropriate when I post Part 2 or Part 3 of this series. Ill also mention other possible MCU musical instruments for the Electronic Light Orchestra, some of which have been in previous posts.

If youre reading this post and are not familiar with laser harps, take a look at my post from June titled, "Microcontrollers And A Humboldt Laser Harp." If you dont want to read that, just look for  laser harp  on Google and on YouTube.

Here are a few of the basic facts of the project:

Makezine laser harp (http://makezine.com/projects/laser-harp/)

• Right now there are three of us on the project: Ed Smith, Nick A, and Bob Waldron.
• As the project develops, Hal W and others might join in on the project.
• Ed is the lead for code and basic project design. For most questions about the project, Ed is the gatekeeper. [July 19 update: the best way to contact Ed about the project is to talk to him in person at one of the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group meetings. If you cant do that, email him at bobnova (at) humboldtmicro {dott} com.]
• Nick is the lead person for building the harp frame.
• The HLH v.1.0 will reside at Nicks house.
• Im going to sketch up some type of a black mini booth or covering designed to help see the laser beams when the laser harp is not in a darkened room.
• As indicated above, well use GitHub for the code repository and versioning, and for remote project collaboration. We discussed other options, such as DropBox, Google Docs, Texas Instruments Energia, or other services Ed might prefer that Nick and I are also ok with. Ed didnt have a strong preference, and Nick likes GitHub, so thats what we using, at least for now.
• The project will be open source, both software and hardware, to the extent possible. The parts that arent truly open source will be transparent as far as all the code and components being identified. If someone else wants to replicate what weve done, theyll be welcome to do so. (Of course, we might change our tune when someone offers us a lot of money to buy our ideas, laser harps or other MCU electronic musical instruments...)
• Bob will work with Josh Cowles or others to figure out the appropriate open source licenses to put on the pieces of this project that can accurately be called open source.
• Were probably going to have six lasers in version 1.0 of the HLH, but well think about MCU and other hardware capabilities in terms of being able to easily expand the design to a twelve laser harp and put in hooks or code blocks that make it easy to convert the programs from six-laser to a twelve-laser design.
• Nick will put a post about the project on the Humboldt Makers Google Group mailing list, and possibly on online sites that could give the project favorable visibility.

A true laser harp

In tomorrows post, Ill cover some of the other details discussed in todays meeting. If you have questions or comments about the HLH, send them to me at arcatabob (at) gmail {dott} com.

If you know of other people in Humboldt County who have already built a laser harp or who play a laser harp, please share their contact info with me, or at least their name. Wed love to connect and talk laser harp technology with them.

We look forward to a long and illustrious career for the Electronic Light Orchestra of Humboldt!

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