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(soft music)

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- Welcome to the CircuitPython Show.

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I'm your host, Paul Cutler.

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This episode, I welcome Dan Cogliano.

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Dan is a developer whose interests include

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internet calendar standards, programming,

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retro tech and games, the internet of things,

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ventriloquism, and magic.

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Dan, welcome to the show.

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- Thank you for having me.

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This is my first podcast, so it's a special time for me.

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(laughs)

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- How did you first get started

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with computers and electronics?

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- Well, my first experience with a computer

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was in high school.

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I'm a little bit old, so the programming class

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they had in high school was Fortran.

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This was back in the '70s, and we had one computer

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throughout the whole county

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that would run Fortran programs,

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and it wasn't my school.

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What we'd have to do is we'd have to code our programs

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and send it to the school.

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They'd run the program and then they'd send it back.

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So it was like a three day turnaround.

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In fact, we didn't even have punch cards.

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We didn't even have money for punch card machines.

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So we had holo with cards with bubbles on them.

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So you would code using a Sharpie for Fortran statements

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and that sort of thing.

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So yeah, so it would take literally three days

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to put in a program and get your output back.

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So we had to double, triple check our code

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before we'd send it out,

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'cause we won't see it for three days.

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So that was kind of my first step into programming.

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And then in college, I took some classes.

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I took a Pascal class.

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I took an assembly class,

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which was on the Motorola 6502,

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which is the chip that was used on the early Macintoshes

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and Apple IIs, I believe.

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And so I learned machine assembly language

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with that class, which I thought was really good.

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I had a programmable calculator.

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Those were getting very popular at the time.

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So I had an HP 41 calculator.

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So that was a good learning experience.

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And then after college, I got an Amiga computer

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and I started writing shareware programs on the Amiga.

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So then I got into C and C++.

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And then later I started getting into Arduino.

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And funny story, I didn't get into Arduino

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'cause I didn't know if I wanted to learn another language

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and I realized, oh, that's C.

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(laughs)

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I didn't, it took me like a year, I think,

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before I realized, oh, that Arduino is C and C++.

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So that's kind of like how I got started.

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- How did you discover CircuitPython?

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- Well, CircuitPython, I got into Arduino

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And a lot of the processors that worked with Arduino

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also worked with CircuitPython.

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I dabbled in that and one of my first projects

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was something called the EasyMake Oven,

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which it's a reflow oven.

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And I was looking at reflow ovens at the time

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and we had a lot of Chinese manufacturers

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And we had all these reviews and they were using paper insulation and they were not very

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high quality.

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I thought, "Well, what if I made my own?"

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And I kind of looked around.

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I looked at the Adafruit store and I said, "Hey, they've got all the parts I need except

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for the toaster oven."

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I basically converted a toaster oven into a reflow oven.

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So I took the toaster oven, Pi Portal, which was an Adafruit product that had just come

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out. I had a thermocouple, which is kind of like measures the temperature inside the toaster oven.

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Then there was a switch, basically a, looked like a power strip, but you can program this power

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strip to turn on and off. And I didn't want to do any kind of high voltage wiring. So I thought,

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hey, I can just regulate this by just programmatically turning the toaster oven on and

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off. And I can graph it, you know, the temperature versus time. And I, that's how I came up with the

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the EasyMake oven. So it's actually one of my favorite projects and I still use it.

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I love the name of it. And that was my next question was actually if you were still using it,

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so it's good to hear that it's still around. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and for people who don't

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know what a reflow oven is, it's basically, you know, you could do through-hole soldering, but

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if you want to get into PCBs and smaller components, then that's where you would use a

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a reflow oven. So yeah, I have some things that have some small parts that the reflow

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oven is ideal for making components like that.

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You've created the Z-Machine, which can run classic Zork games. How did that first start

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for you?

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It started out with Arduino. I wrote a, or I ported a Z-Machine to Arduino on an Adafruit

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itsy-bitsy device, which is really like the size of your thumb. And I ported that using Arduino NC.

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And I thought at the time, I'd like to do that in CircuitPython too at some point. But back then,

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the hardware, you basically needed a screen, enough memory. And so what I did was,

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I kind of put that on the side and then when I saw the fruit jam come out, I said, "Oh, this would be perfect for that."

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It's got the keyboard, it's got the screen, it's got memory, enough memory, you can save files to it.

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So it had basically all the parts that I needed for the Z machine.

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So I guess the only question I had was how the performance would be,

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since you've got an interpreted language running an interpreted computer.

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So I thought, well, I want to go with this and see how far I get with it.

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And that's kind of how it came about.

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And I think the performance turned out great.

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I was really impressed with the performance.

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What are some of the features of CPZMachine?

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How does someone get started with it?

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Well, we have, you can run it either standalone or there's something called

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which is a way you can run pre-packaged CircuitPython games and applications.

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So you can run it either way.

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So the performance was one thing I was looking at, and that turned out really nice.

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The save game, there's an issue with CircuitPython where you have one operating system that can read and write,

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and the other operating system can only do read-only.

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So the nice thing about CircuitPython version 10 is that they have a saves or

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cpsaves folder which allows you to have the CircuitPython operating system read

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and write those files in that saves folder while the host computer has

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read and write access so you can copy files and you can copy the CircuitPython

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libraries, you know, the CPZ machine, the game files, so you can do all that and still

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have rewrite access for the save games.

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Save is really important when you're playing Zork and Z machine games, because you can

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die and you lose what you have.

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So that was one nice thing that came out with CircuitPython 10 recently, so that was a big

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help too.

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Yeah, that CP saves partition is pretty neat for creating games now. You're not the first one to take advantage of that.

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Mm-hmm.

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Were there any challenges in creating the CPZ machine?

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Yeah, well, it's an interpreted, almost like assembly language. So I kind of

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resurrected my skills from college days,

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assembly language, and

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basically, there's a bunch of machine codes that you have to emulate and then you have to debug them.

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And so the debugging part is the hard part where you have to step through and say,

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you know, is this what it's supposed to be doing? So that took the most amount of time, was

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writing the machine codes and debugging them. And so what I did was, you know, since ZMachine's

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been around forever, there's other implementations of it. So I took a ZMachine that someone else

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wrote in C, and I put some debug statements so I could follow that version and compare it to the

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version I was writing and see when they diverged and say, "Oh, you know what? Why is my program

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diverging at this point? I'll go back to the reference C machine that I'm working with."

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And I said, "Oh, okay. I forgot something or whatever." So, yeah. So, that was very helpful.

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So, for those that might be a little younger than us, can you take a minute to explain what

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game Zork is?

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>> The Zork came out in the '80s. It was developed by staff and students at MIT. It came off of a, I believe it was a PDP-11

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computer, and they decided to commercialize it. Back in the '80s, you know, the computers were not very powerful, but there was a lot of

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different computers out there, they all ran different software.

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And so they thought, well, we're going to try to write something that will work on all

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these devices.

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And they decided to split the program in two.

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They took one part of it, which was the story, basically the data that had all the text and

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the logic.

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That was one part of it.

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And that part could run on any of the computers that were out there in the day.

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only part they had to write was the machine codes for that particular operating system.

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So that way they were able to maximize their stories and the logic there and just have to

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write what they call the Z machine, which is the program that runs the Zork game.

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And they came out with other games too, not just Zork, but they have Zork 2, Zork 3, and there's

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probably several dozen ZMachine type games that you could run on it.

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And the CPZMachine supports all those games?

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It supports version 3, which was the first version that came out. I'm probably going to look at

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supporting other versions in the future, but I think the majority of them are version 3,

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so you get most of them with that. And I'm also working on a learn guide for the

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CPC machine and Zwork and all that. So hopefully that'll be out by the time this airs.

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Yeah, I'll make sure that if it is, I'll link to it in the show notes as well.

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Tell me about the latest game you've been working on, a Moonlander type game.

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Yeah, so once I finished with the Z-Machine, I thought, well,

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now I think get something a little bit more graphical. Zwork and Z-Machine's all text-based,

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there's no graphics. In fact, the only graphics is I have a blinking cursor. It's a little square

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that I turn on and off. So that was that was the extent of my graphics with the Z machine. But

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I thought I want to try to get a little more fancy. And one of the games I liked when I was

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in college was this lunar lander game where you take the lunar module and you try to land it on

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the moon. And I thought, well, I'm going to make a version of that and see what I can do in Circuit

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Python. So I've been working on that. It's basically a physics-based game where you're

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trying to land without crashing on the moon, and so you have to deal with gravity thrust from the

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rocket angles. And you want to land vertically, you don't want to land on your side, which

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is happening on the moon recently. So I thought, "Yeah, this will be something nice to do." And

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at some point in the near future.

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- What's your experience been working with graphics

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and display IO?

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Has it been a challenge?

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- And CircuitPython, it's great for a lot of things,

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but sometimes, heavy graphics,

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it's particularly real-time graphics, it's hard to do.

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So sometimes I have to change my mind on what I wanna do.

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Like I originally wanted to have a scrolling background

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with my Lunar Lander scrolling,

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looking at the lunar surface.

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And I thought, well, I took a look at trying that.

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And I was using a high resolution,

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which is also what I wanted to do.

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And so higher resolution means, you know,

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you got more bits to work with and it slows things down.

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So the trade-off was, you know,

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either lower resolution and higher,

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you know, scrolling or higher resolution.

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And then, so I kind of do is I just page,

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I go from one page to the next.

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I don't do the scrolling.

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So that was fine.

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I think it works great, and you just

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get a slight delay when you go from one screen to the next.

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If anyone wants to learn more about you and your work,

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where should they go?

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Well, I'm on Blue Sky at Cogliano.

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My last name's C-O-G-L-I-A-N-O. And I

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do have some Learn Guides up there on the Adafruit site,

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so you can check out some other Learn Guides.

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I've got a few other CircuitPython learn guides there.

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I have one where I, related to the EasyMakeOven,

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I use the PyPortal.

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And I didn't, in that case, I did not use the feature

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where you'd be able to get to the internet,

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'cause I didn't need the internet for that.

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But I do have another project where I pull artwork down

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from the Museum of Art in Cleveland.

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So it kind of cycles through images there.

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I'll make sure to link to those in the show notes as well.

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Last question I ask each guest,

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you're starting a new project or prototype,

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which board do you reach for?

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Well, right now it's the Fruit Jam.

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I'm really excited about the Fruit Jam.

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I think there's a lot of potential there,

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and I've seen some of the emulators that have come out.

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There's the Mac emulator,

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which is something I want to try.

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It's not just CircuitPython or Arduino,

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but you know, you have these emulators. So it's got the gamut of options there for you.

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I'll probably be sticking with CircuitPython, but I do want to try some of these emulators.

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Yeah, I agree. There's a new 286 emulator that just came out, and Apple II,

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Sega Genesis. It's just crazy how much support is coming out for the Fruit Jam.

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Dan, thanks so much for coming on the show.

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Oh, I appreciate it. I love being here and I appreciate getting invited. Thank you.