# CircuitPython Weekly for 6 July 2020

Video is available here [on YouTube](https://youtu.be/fh91P9NBPvg) and [on diode.zone](https://diode.zone/videos/watch/36cad613-2f72-4ce1-a165-9dcb8197621e).


Join here for the chat all week: http://adafru.it/discord


The CircuitPython Weekly happens normally at 2pm ET/11am PT on Mondays. Check the #circuitpython channel on Discord for notices of change in time and links to past meetings. Meeting times are also available in iCal format using the following link: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/adafruit/adafruit-circuitpython-weekly-meeting/master/meeting.ical or view it in your browser: https://open-web-calendar.herokuapp.com/calendar.html?url=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/adafruit/adafruit-circuitpython-weekly-meeting/master/meeting.ical


CircuitPython development is sponsored by Adafruit. Please support them by purchasing hardware from https://adafruit.com.


Reminders: Podcast available on most services. Let us know if we’re missing some.

## 4:54 Community News
5:04 CircuitPython on the Seeed Studio Wio Terminal

The Wio Terminal, an all-in-one microcontroller development kit which includes sensors, buttons, Grove connectors, and a screen, is now officially-supported in CircuitPython.
More - hackster.io and CircuitPython.org.

5:55 CircuitPython 6.0.0 Alpha 1 released!

The first alpha release of CircuitPython 6.0.0 is out now. It is a renumbered version of 5.4.0 because i2cslave module and class have been renamed to i2cperipheral. It is alpha because the developers may remove or rename additional APIs. It is relatively stable.
Feature-wise, this stable release adds basic lower power support when in time.sleep() and initial ESP32-S2 support. The lower power work changed time keeping and may have introduced bugs. Please use 5.3.0 if you need a stable version of CircuitPython.

6:56 CircuitPython on a Watch

A watch running CircuitPython, based on the Open Hardware Summit 2020 badge - Adafruit Blog and Twitter.

7:27 SciPy 2020

SciPy 2020, the 19th annual Scientific Computing with Python conference, is a virtual conference being held July 6-12, 2020. The annual SciPy Conference brings together over 900 participants from industry, academia, and government to showcase their latest projects, learn from skilled users and developers, and collaborate on code development. The full program will consist of 5 days tutorials and talks (July 6-10) and 2 days of developer sprints (July 11-12) - Event.

8:06 Python Resource Humble Bundle

Humble Bundle is offering a "Pay what you want" offer for Python learning texts. $1,400 worth of materials. A portion of each sale goes to the Python Software Foundation. - Humble Bundle.

8:31 Adafruit Update

Adafruit is shipping!
Please Shop Adafruit to support open source hardware, software, and publications like this newsletter.

9:02 Newsletter

Thanks to Anne for putting the newsletter together. We’d love help with it. Contribute to the draft here: https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython-weekly-newsletter/blob/gh-pages/_drafts/2020-07-07-draft.md

## 9:48 State of CircuitPython, Libraries and Blinka
### 10:10 Overall
* 21 pull requests merged
  * 15 authors - weblate, kattni, siddacious, ryevertigo, deshipu, jepler, fig1010, FoamyGuy, dherrada, dhalbert, oonid, brentru, makermelissa, wtuemura, tannewt
  * 10 reviewers - kattni, ladyada, deshipu, jepler, FoamyGuy, dhalbert, dherrada, brentru, makermelissa, tannewt
* 25 closed issues by 9 people, 17 opened by 16 people


Overall: We’re starting to pick up on libraries again because we’re starting to produce more sensors.  On the blink side we continue to see DisplayIO mature which is awesome.  On the core side we’ve made the switch to 6.0 and concluded the discussions about deprecating M/S terminology with really good result.  We’re not too far from a stable 6.0 release.  Jeff is the person on the hook for that, getting back some speed lost due to lower power patches.  No pressure, Jeff.
### 11:59 Core
* 5 pull requests merged
  * 7 authors - weblate, tannewt, oonid, wtuemura, ryevertigo, deshipu, jepler
  * 3 reviewers - tannewt, dhalbert, jepler
* 15 open pull requests
  * https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython/pull/2780 (Open 79 days)
  * https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython/pull/2879 (Open 55 days)
  * https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython/pull/2914 (Open 50 days)
  * https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython/pull/2966 (Open 39 days)
  * https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython/pull/2985 (Open 35 days)
  * https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython/pull/3003 (Open 32 days)
  * https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython/pull/3044 (Open 19 days)
  * https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython/pull/3061 (Open 13 days)
  * https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython/pull/3067 (Open 10 days)
  * https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython/pull/3101 (Open 4 days)
  * https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython/pull/3099 (Open 4 days)
  * https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython/pull/3113 (Open 3 days)
  * https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython/pull/3107 (Open 3 days)
  * https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython/pull/3120 (Open 1 days)
  * https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython/pull/3118 (Open 1 days)
* 3 closed issues by 3 people, 6 opened by 6 people
* 319 open issues
  * https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython/issues
* 7 active milestones
  * 5.x.0 - Features: 11 open issues
  * 5.x.x - Bug Fixes: 28 open issues
  * 6.0.0: 7 open issues
  * 7.0.0: 1 open issues
  * Libraries: 11 open issues
  * Long term: 252 open issues
  * Support: 4 open issues
  * 5 issues not assigned a milestone


* Core download stats available at https://circuitpython.org/stats
### 13:55 Libraries
* 14 pull requests merged
  * 8 authors - kattni, siddacious, jepler, FoamyGuy, dherrada, dhalbert, brentru, makermelissa
  * 9 reviewers - kattni, ladyada, deshipu, FoamyGuy, dhalbert, dherrada, brentru, makermelissa, tannewt
  * Merged pull requests:
    * https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_MiniMQTT/pull/42 (Days open: 7)
    * https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_L3GD20/pull/19 (Days open: 6)
    * https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_Display_Shapes/pull/15 (Days open: 4)
    * https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_Display_Text/pull/57 (Days open: 4)
    * https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_Display_Button/pull/20 (Days open: 2)
    * https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_BluefruitConnect/pull/22 (Days open: 1)
    * https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_AdafruitIO/pull/38 (Days open: 1)
    * https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_Display_Button/pull/21 (Days open: 1)
    * https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_Debouncer/pull/20 (Days open: 1)
    * https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_BLE_Eddystone/pull/10 (Days open: 1)
    * https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_FONA/pull/8 (Days open: 1)
    * https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_SSD1305/pull/10 (Days open: 1)
    * https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_74HC595/pull/12 (Days open: 1)
    * https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_Bundle/pull/256 (Days open: 1)
* 21 closed issues by 6 people, 11 opened by 11 people
* https://circuitpython.org/contributing
  * 166 open issues
  * 36 open pull requests (Oldest: 546, Newest: 2)
Library updates in the last seven days:
**New Libraries**
 * [Adafruit_CircuitPython_BH1750](https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_BH1750)
**Updated Libraries**
 * [Adafruit_CircuitPython_LIS3MDL](https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_LIS3MDL)
 * [Adafruit_CircuitPython_LED_Animation](https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_LED_Animation)
 * [Adafruit_CircuitPython_AdafruitIO](https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_AdafruitIO)
 * [Adafruit_CircuitPython_Display_Button](https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_Display_Button)
 * [Adafruit_CircuitPython_Debouncer](https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_Debouncer)
 * [Adafruit_CircuitPython_BLE_Eddystone](https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_BLE_Eddystone)
 * [Adafruit_CircuitPython_ImageLoad](https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_ImageLoad)
 * [Adafruit_CircuitPython_HID](https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_HID)
 * [Adafruit_CircuitPython_MAX31855](https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_MAX31855)
 * [Adafruit_CircuitPython_TSL2561](https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_TSL2561)
 * [Adafruit_CircuitPython_SSD1305](https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_SSD1305)
 * [Adafruit_CircuitPython_L3GD20](https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_L3GD20)
 * [Adafruit_CircuitPython_Display_Shapes](https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_Display_Shapes)
 * [Adafruit_CircuitPython_Display_Text](https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_Display_Text)
 * [Adafruit_CircuitPython_MiniMQTT](https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_MiniMQTT)
 * [Adafruit_Blinka](https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_Blinka)
### 15:57 Blinka
* 2 pull requests merged
  * 2 authors - makermelissa, fig1010
  * 2 reviewers - makermelissa, FoamyGuy
* 1 open pull requests
  * https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_Blinka/pull/304 (Open 28 days)
* 1 closed issues by 1 people, 0 opened by 0 people
* 24 open issues
  * https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_Blinka/issues
* PyPI Downloads in the last week: 2656
Number of supported boards: 52
## 16:46 Hug reports


18:50 @anecdata (lurking)
* Group hug
* @jerryn for being a good sounding board as we were each working on testing esp32-s2


@anneb (lurking)


19:15 @brentru
* Group hug!


19:23 @CGrover (listening only)
* Hug to the community and team!


19:33 @charlesburnaford
* Hug report for @tannewt for the deep dives.  “I get to see what goes into getting a new board to function”
* Group hug to everyone for 6.0


20:18 @danh
* Group hug to a great community that is an active participant in our software development.


@davep (lurking)


20:54 @DavidGlaude (missing meeting)
* @foamyguy for triggering the conversation on compiling CP in Pi, @jerryn for providing the toolchain and @danh for the learn guide. 


21:13 @fede2 (lurking)
* To @tannewt for starting to revise the wifi related libraries, long overdue
* To @anneb and @kattni for being super helpful on the translation guides
* To weblate project and for adafruit for paying the hosting. I hope to get ES at 100% before 6.0 release


21:38 @foamyguy
* @kjw for finding and reporting issues with display_text, and @kmatch98 for helping resolve them
* @anecdata for helping me with some color conversion bitwise math
* Discord user @PitchBright for patiently working through RGBW Neopixel troubleshooting that uncovered a small bug
* @makermilissa for work on Blinka and especially the recent additions of displayio
* @Chris Young for working on wireless 2 player games that utilize LoRa


23:11 @hierophect
* group hug


23:38 @jasonp (lurking)
* @adafruit for the Eye on NPI section last week featuring Evo M51.  Thank you!!


23:52 @jepler
* Group hug
* Adafruit for being accommodating when I asked for time off at the last minute
* Tannewt for 6.0 alpha
* New translation contributor “oonid” on github, improving our Indonesian translation; and “ryevertigo”, improving our Dutch translation.
* Everyone who is contributing in discussions.  We don’t count it specifically but when you provide useful information in Issues and Pull Requests that is also valuable!


25:05 @jerryn
* @tannewt for busio on esp32s2.
* @anecdata for support with esp32s2 testing
* @davep for the fix to pulseIn on for SAMD21
* All involved in the terminology revisions to remove master/slave -- actions speak!
* Group hug!


25:49 @kattni
* @foamyguy for providing so many PR reviews with thorough testing and comments/suggestions when needed
* @fede2 for translating my Key of Lime guide to Spanish, though the pun was lost in translation ;)
* @jepler for working towards running this meeting. 
* The team and community for CircuitPython 6.0
* Everyone who has been consistently helping out on Discord
* Community Moderators on Discord for continuing to keep our community welcoming and positive, and for providing ideas and suggestions to improve the community experience


26:54 @kingernorth (text only)
* A big hug to @AnneB for including me in the Python on Microcontrollers weekly newsletter
* A group hug for all of the community for the continuing work in Discord and CircuitPython


27:10 @MakerMelissa
* @Foamyguy, @KMatch98, and @KJW for taking care of fixing up and testing Display_Text.
* @Foamyguy for testing and reviewing some of my PRs
* Dan and Scott for taking care of circuitpython.org
* Group Hug


@Mark(Gamblor) [lurking]


@Mr. Certainly [lurking]


27:43 @stargirl
* Thanks to @ShawnHymel for his excellent blog post on SAMD21 PWM using just registers.
* Everyone who worked on CircuitPython 6.0.


@szymon (lurking)


17:13 @tannewt
* Thanks to @obra from keyboard.io for the Wechat advice. Thanks to Elaine from Seeed for helping get the group chat going.
* @ansonhe97 for the Wio Terminal support
* @jerryn, @David G, @foamyguy, @danh and @anecdata for helping folks on Discord
* @DavePutz for diving deep into the RTC on the SAMD21


18:22 @tg-techie 
* Hug to the community for being so welcoming
* @tannewt for livestreams, very educational
* Hug to everyone working on 6.0


@zeus_do_oplimpo (lurking)
## 28:58 Status Updates
@anecdata (lurking)


@anneb (lurking)


31:19 @brentru
* Moved last week
* Enjoying being able to walk and take bike rides
* Starting work on a library to generate CircuitPython code for use with Protocol Buffer files (.proto)


@CGrover (listening only)


32:43 @charlesburnaford
* The big thing for me this week is updating Raspberry pi, circuitpython, and all the other boards.
* Will check if anything funny is going on with existing projects


33:24 @danh
* Continuing work on _bleio for HCI adapters. Rewriting communications API taken from ArduinoBLE to use busio.UART and using Zephyr HCI header files, which define all the HCI commands. Will be ready to re-test soon.
* Asked Linux USB developers about Linux crashes. Part of the reply was that it’s OK that Linux crashes when a USB flash drive changes out from under the filesystem driver.


@davep (lurking)


@fede2 (lurking)


36:20 @foamyguy
* Thisweek
   * Implemented fill_row for Blinka_Displayio and made tweak to bitmapsaver library to allow it to work with Blinka. Hug to Jeff E!
   * Troubleshooting and working on a fix for an issue with display_text
   * Make my JSON Layout utility work with Blinka_Displayio and start working on test scripts that save screenshots of all of the examples
   * Started working on Gorillas.bas clone
* Next week
   * Finalize display_text fix PR
   * Keep working on Gorillas and try to implement LoRa based 2 player
   * Get back to adding more devices to pybadger library
   * Cleanup PR with Blinka example of saving sensor data in MySQL


39:14 @hierophect
* Last week
   * Rewriting PulseIO to use new timers
   * Debug HAL issue with SPI that was causing issues during beginner tutorials. 
   * Reading about ESP32-S2
   * Failed to get on wechat, if anybody knows somebody that’d be handy
* This week
   * Finish timer PR
   * RotaryIO
   * Get a control going with ESP32-S2
   * Moving to new apartment

40:44 @jasonp (lurking)        
   * Board lib development for Evo M51
   * Example for EvoBox (Evo M51/AirLift Featherwing) + adafruit.io 


41:04 @jepler
   * Took a break much of last week
   * Reviewed the ESP32S2 busio stuff
   * This week:
   * Background tasks stuff on samd
   * Some early success with audio, but it’s not reliable
   * Need to learn more about the relationship between DMA, EVSYS, and interrupts (if anyone has resources, please drop a link in the chat--I could still use a good tutorial/introduction here)
   * Fun stuff:
   * I bought an older HP Frequency Counter on ebay this weekend, it should fill a gap in my test equipment lineup.
   * Belated hug report for Hierophect for reviewing my pull request about SPI pin allocation on stm


42:57 @jerryn
   * Tried some I2C and SPI devices on esp32s2
   * No issues with I2C so far.
   * SPI 
   * bme280 works fine
   * ESP32SPI on Airlift communicating - some support modules missing (ujson)
   * Strange issue with airlift breakout and breadboard. Had to connect the power/ground to same row as actual pis. Using power rails would fail -- may be noise when actually using WiFi
   * Airlift feather wing on Scotts adapter board worked fine.
   * SDCard breakout -- will not detect SDCard
   * Now that pulseIn is fixed on SAMD21 -- getting back to squeezing RfM9X into CP build.
   * Have to give up some core modules. (RTC, HID, TOUCH. Maybe neopixel…)
   * I had hoped to take out pulseio and use bitbang for DHTxx but it does not seem to work. Not sure why.
   * Still tough for several of the translations…. Will keep working on it.


48:33 @kattni
   * Last week:
   * Published the 74HC595 guide.
   * BH1750 fritzing created
   * TPS61023 fritzing updated, PCB files uploaded to GitHub
   * Finished updating the ST Combo Board guide
   * Corrected an issue with the Key of Lime guide
   * PRs, etc.
   * This week:
   * Finish the guide to running the CircuitPython Weekly meeting
   * Blog up 74HC595 guide release
   * Work up a welcome blurb for the Adafruit Discord server and set up Welcome screen
   * Update BMP280 guide with STEMMA QT version
   * Update servo guide to include Raspberry Pi (PWM added to Blinka)
   * Move first CircuitPython library to main default branch
   * Update Contributing to Git and GitHub guide
   * Get PyPI download stats going.
   * Check assigned GitHub issues




53:48 @kingernorth (text only)
   * Last week
   * Worked on another episode of my YouTube live stream of Microcontrollers with kingernorth
   * Commissioned a production line PLC for a local packaging company
   * This week
   * Working on the next live stream content
   * Working on a new water handling program, PLC, for the same local packaging company


54:19 @MakerMelissa
   * Last Week:
   * Made some fixes to Blinka Displayio that sped it up significantly
   * Ported several examples to the Blinka PyPortal Library and made several improvements and fixes along the way
   * Started a guide on using Blinka PyPortal and Blinka Displayio
   * Implemented PWMOut in Blinka
   * Added full brightness/backlight control to Blinka Displayio
   * This Week:
   * Finish up guide on using Blinka PyPortal and Blinka Displayio
   * Take a closer look at why an eInk example is failing on an M0 running in arduino
   * Hopefully add some more features to Blinka Displayio


@Mark(Gamblor) [lurking]


@Mr. Certainly [lurking]


55:21 @stargirl
   * Wrote up a blog post on how to get phase-shifted PWM outputs from the SAMD21.
   * Started work on a new (secret) Eurorack module - it unfortunately won’t run CircuitPython, but it will use the SAMD21. :)
   * Still sorting out move stuff, but I move on August 5th!


@szymon (lurking)


29:28 @tannewt
   * ESP32-S2 busio merged in and released in 6.0.0-alpha.1
   * Reworking Adafruit_Requests and ESP32SPI for smaller APIs and less memory.
   * Created a WeChat account to better communicate with Chinese CircuitPython folks.
   * Need to add 6.x library and bundle builds


30:32 @tg-techie
   * An internship at a military R&D.  Was able to bring CircuitPython in .  Wrote a driver to interface with a chip to communicate over a military standard protocol.  Took just a few hours to get it working.
## 56:19 In The Weeds
56:40 @danh
   * Looking for exact details of Linux USB-related crashes.
   * Both @jerryn (Linux on Mac Mini) and @charlesburnaford (RPi) report they have seen crashes when just unplugging, not replugging. This makes me want to try that with a FAT12 filesystem on a USB drive to see if I can provoke a crash.


1:01:58 @jerryn
   * Do we really need multiple bundle builds?
   * Has been discussed before.
   * Why not only create new bundle for new .mpy format if/when needed.
   * My concern is that I see many people needlessly reloading to “upgrade” when there is no difference between 4.x,5.xand soon to be 6.x
   * Especially if we move to some other “bundling” process.


1:10:46 @jepler
   * Soliciting introductory / tutorial level information on EVSYS & interrupt handling on SAM micros
## 1:29:33 Wrap-Up
