New MicroPython release: v1.11

[mattyt]

MicroPython v1.11 was released yesterday! Congrats to all involved.

Highlights include: Improvements to the mpy format (with support for native code) and a Javascript port. But there have been many, many incremental improvements across the board - over 350 commits since v1.10 on 26th Jan. Take a look at the changelog for details.

The prebuilt downloads page already provides v1.11 builds.

Of note: Support for PyBoard D was not included in v1.11 - it's the focus for v1.12.

[Edit] Also notable: Ticket #4821 that covers the Roadmap for next release (v1.11 -> v2.0?).

[kevinkk525]

Congrats, great job! Looking forward to 2.0

Also fixed is a rare esp8266 bug that could cause uasyncio to block everything for 1h 11 minutes. No more watchdog needed on my esp8266s.

[OutoftheBOTS_]

Wow that was a fast update from v1.10

[JoeCharlieH]

I'm really happy that they added the I2C.writevto(addr,vect) method and that it's already used in the ssd1306 driver

[kowapuk]

boards: enable dual core support by default

How to use second core? What's tasks work on it?

[jimmo]

How to use second core? What's tasks work on it?

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable about ESP32 can confirm, but I believe that this enables FreeRTOS threads (tasks) to use multiple cores, and that MicroPython threads are based on FreeRTOS threads.

You can use the _thread module (which is uhh undocumented... see https://docs.micropython.org/en/latest/ ... hread.html) but have a look at https://github.com/micropython/micropyt ... sts/thread for some example programs that use it.

[mattyt]

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable about ESP32 can confirm, but I believe that this enables FreeRTOS threads (tasks) to use multiple cores, and that MicroPython threads are based on FreeRTOS threads.

You can use the _thread module (which is uhh undocumented... see https://docs.micropython.org/en/latest/ ... hread.html) but have a look at https://github.com/micropython/micropyt ... sts/thread for some example programs that use it.

Yes, that's my understanding too. Damien demonstrated _thread at the November Melbourne MicroPython Meetup.

[LisaM]

How to use second core? What's tasks work on it?

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable about ESP32 can confirm, but I believe that this enables FreeRTOS threads (tasks) to use multiple cores, and that MicroPython threads are based on FreeRTOS threads.

You can use the _thread module (which is uhh undocumented... see https://docs.micropython.org/en/latest/ ... hread.html) but have a look at https://github.com/micropython/micropyt ... sts/thread for some example programs that use it.

And the performance improvement of dual versus single core is staggering! I'm amazed how much faster my app now is running (my app is quite big in size, currently at 1.6MB, and very complex including running against Azure IoT).