MicroPython on ESP8266 Kickstarter

All ESP8266 boards running MicroPython.
Official boards are the Adafruit Huzzah and Feather boards.
Target audience: MicroPython users with an ESP8266 board.
pfalcon
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Re: MicroPython on ESP8266 Kickstarter

Post by pfalcon » Thu Jan 28, 2016 12:09 pm

About forks: that's interesting topic and worth detailed discussion. We of course aware of them and indeed, sometimes it feels that unlike many other hardware platforms (there's 90 people contributed to uPy - that's a small crowd already!), esp8266 forks somehow become real forks, moving in their own direction, and that direction goes farther and farther from *Python*, the language which unites us all, and offers common API to easily write portable, reusable programs. So, each fork adds features needed by the authors, but the core API doesn't get attention and effort (as you know, esp8266 by default comes with a proprietary network API, and that's the root of the problem).

So, this project is actually attempt to reunite all folks interested in ESP8266 port, and set the right direction for the core functionality. And believe me, it does take effort to get rid of proprietary vendor shims and expose nice networking socket-based API, and fight off memory from vendor blobs and give it to the user! But when that's done, there're now good foundation and ability to work on many other advanced things, and we'll definitely need help from the developer community to tackle these advanced things (mesh, etc.)

You can also read my personal thoughts on this in a post on esp8266 forum:
http://www.esp8266.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7869
Awesome MicroPython list
Pycopy - A better MicroPython https://github.com/pfalcon/micropython
MicroPython standard library for all ports and forks - https://github.com/pfalcon/micropython-lib
More up to date docs - http://pycopy.readthedocs.io/

Damien
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Re: MicroPython on ESP8266 Kickstarter

Post by Damien » Thu Jan 28, 2016 11:26 pm

pythoncoder wrote:This looks very interesting. Is the port likely to be stripped down in any way compared to the Pyboard version (e.g. float support)? How much RAM and Flash is likely to be available for user programs? Do you plan to support the FeatherWing OLED display that features in your video?
The ESP8266 has external flash, and for most of the newer modules/boards it has quite a lot of it. As such we can enable pretty much all the bells and whisltes of uPy. There will definitely be floating point support (software arithmetic only though). Amount of left over flash will depend on a lot of factors, including whether/how OTA firmware updates are done. At the moment RAM is at 16k heap, but that's really conservative and only for our proof-of-concept purposes, and the plan is to increase it as much as we can.

All demos in the video are real, and the Feather Wing OLED display is driven by Python scripts. So, yes, that will be supported.

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pythoncoder
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Re: MicroPython on ESP8266 Kickstarter

Post by pythoncoder » Fri Jan 29, 2016 7:58 am

Sounds great. I'll back it :)
Peter Hinch
Index to my micropython libraries.

Turbinenreiter
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Re: MicroPython on ESP8266 Kickstarter

Post by Turbinenreiter » Fri Jan 29, 2016 9:04 am

On a side note, @Damien, how's the ESA project going? Can you talk about that? Would be nice to hear some news from that helm! (MicroPython + ESA is a big deal for me, being an Aerospace Engineering student who want's to work in that field)

pfalcon
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Re: MicroPython on ESP8266 Kickstarter

Post by pfalcon » Fri Jan 29, 2016 1:36 pm

Thanks to everyone who helps to spreads a word about the campaign. We with Damien are working on that, and it's very nice to see the echo going ahead of us ;-).

For example, I was pleasantly surprised to see it appearing on CNX-Software blog: http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/01/28/ ... wdfunding/ . I remember how I shared a WiPy news there, and it took couple of days for the author to consider, so thanks to Jean-Luc for trust (and it's my dream that he tried a unix version and wrote one of his in-depth reviews on it - it really would be helpful to have external unbiased opinion).

And today, there's a post on HackerNews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10993953 . For this last one, I'd like to ask everyone who can to upvote it, to not let it go down too quickly (and there're a lot of other great stories on HN!)

Both CNX-Software and HackerNews are place where professional developers hang out, so it it's easy to get "uncomfortable" questions and criticism. But that's why it's honorable to be there, and it's helpful to both support your cause and get good criticism/outside insights. As you know, we want MicroPython not just be, but be the best. Well, to be competitive and provide unique advantages comparing to other solutions for sure ;-).
Awesome MicroPython list
Pycopy - A better MicroPython https://github.com/pfalcon/micropython
MicroPython standard library for all ports and forks - https://github.com/pfalcon/micropython-lib
More up to date docs - http://pycopy.readthedocs.io/

pfalcon
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Re: MicroPython on ESP8266 Kickstarter

Post by pfalcon » Sat Jan 30, 2016 7:09 pm

Turbinenreiter wrote:On a side note, @Damien, how's the ESA project going? Can you talk about that? Would be nice to hear some news from that helm! (MicroPython + ESA is a big deal for me, being an Aerospace Engineering student who want's to work in that field)
While Damien is busy, I can try to answer that a lot of work pushed by Damien in last couple of months is the outcome (or by-product, I won't guess here) of this work. E.g., nanboxing support merged recently (which allows for fast floating-point operations with double-precision floating point (and doubles is what you need for rocket science of course)). Another ongoing theme is standalone bytecode support, and upcoming 1.6 release should have complete basic support for that, looking at https://github.com/micropython/micropython/issues/1803 . All these both exciting and serious features which improve MicroPython scalability and viability for more serious projects (and which we get very soon in the mainline, as you can see).
Awesome MicroPython list
Pycopy - A better MicroPython https://github.com/pfalcon/micropython
MicroPython standard library for all ports and forks - https://github.com/pfalcon/micropython-lib
More up to date docs - http://pycopy.readthedocs.io/

pfalcon
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Re: MicroPython on ESP8266 Kickstarter

Post by pfalcon » Sat Jan 30, 2016 10:09 pm

Some updates on the campaign, in chronological order:


"Projects We Love" KickStarter choice (former "Staff Pick")

Yesterday, we received a badge from KickStarter titled "Project We Love". At first, we were confused about it - everyone knows "Staff Pick" badge, but what is "Project We Love"? We thought maybe KS introduced several tiers of their appreciation, especially that I remembered that official KS weekly mailing is titled "Projects We Love". We finally figure it out thanks to this article:
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/01/1 ... confusion/

So, "Projects We Love" is the new name of older "Staff Picks", introduced to minimize confusion, and, as the artivle above explains, abuse. In the accompanying mail we received from KS they hinted quite clearly that we should not try to add the badge to the project (a known common practice before, which apparently led to issues mentioned above). Being good crowdfunding citizens, we follow that guideline, so you can see the official "Projects We Love" badge right below the project image at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/21 ... y-easy-iot .

With that part out, it's quite an exciting event of which we are proud! We understand that our project is fairly special purpose and sets modest aims comparing to many other KS projects, but we tried hard to explain what we want to achieve, and how, and make it appealing for any person interested in IoT. Hopefully, if Kickstarter recommends us to its users in general, we achieved that aim!
Awesome MicroPython list
Pycopy - A better MicroPython https://github.com/pfalcon/micropython
MicroPython standard library for all ports and forks - https://github.com/pfalcon/micropython-lib
More up to date docs - http://pycopy.readthedocs.io/

pfalcon
Posts: 1155
Joined: Fri Feb 28, 2014 2:05 pm

Re: MicroPython on ESP8266 Kickstarter

Post by pfalcon » Sat Jan 30, 2016 10:19 pm

Basic Target is Achieved!

Thanks again to all our dedicated and newcoming users, today we achieved our basic funding target - within 3 days after launch. You're incredible, guys! But let's keep the ball rolling and target the stretch goal to make sure there're resources to implement all the exciting ideas and there's big, active community around the project, to tackle even more crazy and exciting ideas! So, please help us to keep spreading the word further.

Please stay tuned for the official KS updates we prepare which show cool new features we want to add to both ESP8266 port and MicroPython as a whole. And of course, we're back to working on the port now, after the first frenzy sprint we had preparing for the initial launch.
Awesome MicroPython list
Pycopy - A better MicroPython https://github.com/pfalcon/micropython
MicroPython standard library for all ports and forks - https://github.com/pfalcon/micropython-lib
More up to date docs - http://pycopy.readthedocs.io/

chrismas9
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Re: MicroPython on ESP8266 Kickstarter

Post by chrismas9 » Sun Jan 31, 2016 3:29 am

Congratulations, you made the top 25 on Kicktraq today :D You deserve it for all the hard work you put into MicroPython.

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pythoncoder
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Re: MicroPython on ESP8266 Kickstarter

Post by pythoncoder » Fri Feb 05, 2016 6:28 am

Seems like you've hit 12K! Congratulations :D
Peter Hinch
Index to my micropython libraries.

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