MicroPython Forum (Archive)

Looks nice. Hopefully they better supported than the M5Stack stuff?

Seeed Studio just sent me one of these to review. Haven't dug in great detail, but the demos work and flashing a firmware via UF2 is simple. Haven't got wifi or more clever peripherals working, but the screen is pretty sharp.

It's much smaller than I expected. The 40 pin header is almost the full width of the unit. It's rather nicely made, too. Not sure about the Grove connectors, especially since I learned there are two kinds and I got the wrong ones. Nothing that a second with a pair of snips won't fix, but still …

Hi,

I have one also but I must admit that it completely fail to support MicroPython.
For sure, flashing the ArduPy MicroPython Firmware with UF2 mode is easy and REPL can be invoked from RShell.

However, impossible to copy a file (main.py) to the WioTerminal with RShell or with the SeeedStudio "aip" command line.
I tried to find a "regular" MicroPython implementation for this device but not found it.

So, from standard MicroPython implementation perspective, the WioTerminal it useless for me. Not possible to upoad python library and python script to the WioTerminal.
The SeeedStudio's ArdyPy way of working: compiling some Arduino Sensor C Code (downloaded from Internet) inside the MicroPython firmware (with the "aip" command line) THEN upload the Firmware to WioTerminal ---> is an overkill concept.

Except if someone can share its experience with WioTerminal plateform under MicroPython... I do think that only Arduino IDE seems to be the right langage to work with it... and supporting a more "standard" development workflow.

Kind regards,
Dominique

From what I understand from Seeed, wifi and BT won't work from ArduPy. I'm fairly sure I got something to write via rshell, but it's been a while since I used it with ArduPy.

CircuitPython support seems to be better: Seeeduino Wio Terminal — but you may not like their "upload code via USB Storage" approach.

The ATSAMD51 core should be supported by existing ports without too much work, but no-one's done the legwork of defining pins and functions to make a supported port inside the micropython repo. I would try this if I was confident of the process and the depth of Seeed's documentation.

The past couple of Melbourne MicroPython Meetups I've been asking the community to help increase the effort to port MicroPython to other architectures. Supporting SAMD is top of the list as it's a very popular chipset and would, in particular, mean many of the Adafruit boards would become available. The response has been positive; at least a few people are keen to help out, given a little guidance. We'd welcome any help!

The short term goals are to: a) publish a document I've been keeping for some time that lists the chipsets with the most potential for porting, b) create a channel in the Slack workspace (get an auto-invite here) to act as a focal point for porting efforts and c) Update the internal Pin API's to make it easier to port and provide a more consistent API between ports. Once that's all done I'm hoping we can unleash the community to create more ports!

As for the Wio Terminal specifically, Seeed have a decent amount of information available on their wiki. We'd actually start by developing support for SAMD21 boards like the Xiao, Trinket M0 and PyQt. These boards are simple with few peripherals - and are cheap so it's easy to convince people to get involved. If we do things right, once SAMD21 is sorted, SAMD51 should come for little effort. The Wio Terminal has a rich set of peripherals but we need to start with better support for the core micro first. I am very interested in the wifi chip though - the Realtek RTL8720DN - since it's powerful enough to run MicroPython standalone.

Anyway, if you - or anyone else - would be interested in helping out please do get in touch!

I had intended to - and still will - create a top-level post in the forum when I've published the document and have something more tangible to discuss in the slack channel. But since you'd raised the Wio Terminal I thought it best to share this now...

Isn't there already a SAMD port? I'm seeing ADAFRUIT_FEATHER_M0_EXPRESS, ADAFRUIT_ITSYBITSY_M4_EXPRESS, ADAFRUIT_TRINKET_M0, MINISAM_M4, SAMD21_XPLAINED_PRO folders under micropython/ports/samd/boards

Yes, there's a minimal SAMD port. It was started some time ago but only provides the basics: a MicroPython REPL over serial (over the USB port). SAMD21 and SAMD51 are supported.

However, there are no peripherals supported, not even Pins. So there's still a lot of work to make the SAMD port useful.

Ah, my apologies, then.

While ArduPy isn't exactly MicroPython, quite a bit of its ATSAMD51 code looks derived from the MicroPython codebase. [s]Have they done useful work, or is it all too much of a side-fork to be portable?[/s] ArduPy/ports/samd at master · Seeed-Studio/ArduPy

→ yes, it appears they have:

Seeed's ArduPy is a combination of Arduino and MicroPython. MicroPython uses the universal Arduino API to control the hardware so that it can be compatible with new platforms quickly. With the help of the aip package manager we provided, you can transform your favorite Arduino library into a MicroPython library. Through ArduPy, you can use Python to verify your ideas, learn python programming as well as micro-controller programming in a more efficient way.

Hum, interesting discussion about SAMD support here.

Is there a root document to follow. .. to install the compiler toolchain and compile MicroPython on a Linux machine ?

Cheers.
Dominique