Python for microcontrollers

[Mark Lawrence]

I thought this might be of interest
Http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/214379695/micro-python-python-for-microcontrollers

 

[Colin J. Williams]

I thought this might be of interest
Http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/214379695/micro-python-python-for-microcontrollers

Is this intended to be better than the Raspberry PI? RPi handles Python
2 or 3.

How would it differ?

Colin W.

 

[Travis Griggs]

Is this intended to be better than the Raspberry PI? RPi handles Python 2 or 3.

How would it differ?

IMO, a whole different class of computer. From that page, the board they’re targeting “... clocked at 168MHz and has 1MiB flash and 192KiB RAM.” They’re running OS-less.

The Pi, on the other hand actually runs a full OS (Linux) and has specs like 700 MHz, 512MB Ram, and an sd card for storage which means you’re going to have to work hard to find something as small as 2G, the sweet price point is going to actually give you 8G.

Whether or not you go for their board, they’re targeting a compute environment that is 5x-ish slower, has at least 2000x less storage space, and works with about a thousandth of the ram of a Pi.

Having forayed into the world of small small micro controllers myself this last year and a half, I’m kind of torn on whether this is a good idea or not. But I think it’s cool they’re trying. And I’d definitely try it to see how it worked out.

 

[Michael Torrie]

Is this intended to be better than the Raspberry PI? RPi handles Python
2 or 3.

How would it differ?

Raspberry Pi is not a microcontroller. It's an embedded, but still full
blown computer and operating system.

Big difference. At least at this stage of the game. Maybe in the
future all our microwaves will run linux on every chip. But for now,
microcontrollers are dominated by 8 and 16-bit microcontrollers that run
code with minimal abstraction.

Years ago there were chips that ran LISP byte codes, and later Java byte
codes. And the stamp chips run BASIC byte codes. And now maybe Python
byte codes! At least a subset of python.

Right now for prototyping I can place a small program on an Atmel chip
(well most microcontrollers actually) that communicates via a well-known
protocol on serial, and then I can hack my algorithms together using
Python on a PC (or a RPi[1]) and give it a test. Staying in Python
would rock.

[1] In fact RPi's electrical interface is harder to work with than say
an Arduino (3.3v, not quite as adept at interfacing with analog inputs,
etc). So many people use them together by mating an Arduino add-on
board to the Pi and then communicating with it over serial port. Makes
a powerful combination. The RPi turns out to be a very powerful and
affordable ethernet shield for arduino!

 

[Michael Torrie]

Having forayed into the world of small small micro controllers myself
this last year and a half, I’m kind of torn on whether this is a good
idea or not. But I think it’s cool they’re trying. And I’d definitely
try it to see how it worked out.

I've also been foraying into the world of micro controllers and I
personally, after watching the video and reading their spiel, am super
excited about this! This is really cool. It's not exactly vaporware
either. The software is 95% done. My only concern is that it appears
to be (since it's ARM), a 3.3v system. The future is 3.3v, I understand
that. But many of the current off-the-shelf sensors and parts are 5v
(TTL level). But there's a lot of stuff that's 3.3v now, and there are
ways of converting logic levels.