1 00:00:02,320 --> 00:00:03,880 Speaker 1: Welcome to the CircuitPython Show. 2 00:00:04,200 --> 00:00:05,280 Speaker 1: I'm your host, Paul Cutler. 3 00:00:05,880 --> 00:00:08,200 Speaker 1: This episode, I'm joined by three former guests on the show, 4 00:00:08,740 --> 00:00:11,380 Speaker 1: Dan Cogliano, Tim Cox, and Cooper Dalrymple. 5 00:00:12,220 --> 00:00:14,200 Speaker 1: They've joined me to chat about the Adafruit Fruit Jam, 6 00:00:14,620 --> 00:00:16,040 Speaker 1: which was first released last July 7 00:00:16,240 --> 00:00:18,600 Speaker 1: and shipped to Adabox subscribers this past November. 8 00:00:19,340 --> 00:00:20,640 Speaker 1: The Fruit Jam runs CircuitPython 9 00:00:20,980 --> 00:00:22,680 Speaker 1: and is a credit card-sized microcomputer 10 00:00:23,180 --> 00:00:26,660 Speaker 1: with display support, USB host for mice keyboards and game pads, 11 00:00:27,000 --> 00:00:29,980 Speaker 1: and SD card, expansion GPIO, and more. 12 00:00:31,760 --> 00:00:33,300 Speaker 1: Tim, Dan, and Cooper, welcome to the show. 13 00:00:34,040 --> 00:00:34,560 Speaker 1: Hey, Paul. 14 00:00:35,620 --> 00:00:35,860 Speaker 1: Hey, Paul. 15 00:00:35,960 --> 00:00:36,620 Speaker 1: Thanks for having us. 16 00:00:37,100 --> 00:00:37,320 Speaker 1: Thanks. 17 00:00:38,320 --> 00:00:39,160 Speaker 1: Tim, we'll start with you. 18 00:00:39,700 --> 00:00:43,180 Speaker 1: The Fruit Jam hardware can run Fruit JamOS, which is a new way to load a circuit 19 00:00:43,440 --> 00:00:44,080 Speaker 1: Python application. 20 00:00:44,860 --> 00:00:47,860 Speaker 1: What was the inspiration for Fruit JamOS and how does it work? 21 00:00:48,960 --> 00:00:49,540 Speaker 1: Yeah, good question. 22 00:00:49,700 --> 00:00:55,320 Speaker 2: So for Adafruit generally, one of our big goals going into Fruit JamOS was to make something 23 00:00:55,560 --> 00:00:59,920 Speaker 2: that sort of harkens back to like the Commodore 64 era of devices. 24 00:01:00,140 --> 00:01:04,320 Speaker 2: sort of all-in-one devices that you write the programs on there, you run the programs on there. 25 00:01:05,019 --> 00:01:06,840 Speaker 2: Back in those days, they had the keyboard built in. 26 00:01:06,960 --> 00:01:08,700 Speaker 2: They had the little display built in. 27 00:01:08,820 --> 00:01:10,340 Speaker 2: So everything was ready to go for you. 28 00:01:10,780 --> 00:01:13,720 Speaker 2: Just kind of plug it in, start programming and do your thing. 29 00:01:13,860 --> 00:01:19,620 Speaker 2: So that was a big inspiration going into Fruit Jam OSbroadly for all the Adafruit folks. 30 00:01:19,880 --> 00:01:24,320 Speaker 2: And then for me specifically, I would say also there was emphasis on Q Basic. 31 00:01:24,760 --> 00:01:28,200 Speaker 2: QBASIC was one of the first programming languages that I ever interacted with. 32 00:01:28,320 --> 00:01:31,140 Speaker 2: So it's always held a sort of nostalgic place in my heart. 33 00:01:32,140 --> 00:01:35,900 Speaker 2: And as I was working on Fruit JamOS, I kind of got, you know, 34 00:01:35,940 --> 00:01:39,860 Speaker 2: it took me back to that era of Q Basic IDE where it was similar. 35 00:01:40,040 --> 00:01:41,300 Speaker 2: It had the editor built in. 36 00:01:41,380 --> 00:01:44,000 Speaker 2: You could pop over and run your code real fast right there. 37 00:01:44,580 --> 00:01:48,280 Speaker 2: And it was just this all in one sort of package, write your code, run your code, 38 00:01:48,680 --> 00:01:51,880 Speaker 2: see what it does right there and iterate through very quickly. 39 00:01:52,040 --> 00:01:55,160 Speaker 2: So that was another big one for me was QBASIC. 40 00:01:55,920 --> 00:02:00,160 Speaker 1: What's involved that add support to a normal CircuitPython program to run on Fruit Jam OS? 41 00:02:01,040 --> 00:02:01,180 Speaker 2: Yeah. 42 00:02:01,680 --> 00:02:06,480 Speaker 2: So it's pretty straightforward, especially if your program is already set up for the Fruit Jam, 43 00:02:06,620 --> 00:02:09,619 Speaker 2: if you're already making use of the Fruit Jam peripherals and stuff like that. 44 00:02:09,960 --> 00:02:13,260 Speaker 2: If you have something completely unrelated, like it's a Pi portal program or something, 45 00:02:13,360 --> 00:02:16,080 Speaker 2: there's a little bit more converting that needs to take place. 46 00:02:16,220 --> 00:02:21,580 Speaker 2: But if you've got an app that you have already used on a Fruit Jam today by just saving it in code. 47 00:02:22,260 --> 00:02:23,160 Speaker 2: It's very straightforward. 48 00:02:23,420 --> 00:02:25,720 Speaker 2: You can just create an icon for it, or even, 49 00:02:25,740 --> 00:02:27,300 Speaker 2: even just leave it the default one if you want. 50 00:02:27,490 --> 00:02:30,020 Speaker 2: Create a little metadata file that has the name of your app. 51 00:02:30,070 --> 00:02:32,120 Speaker 2: It has the file path to the icon. 52 00:02:32,660 --> 00:02:36,920 Speaker 2: You store that alongside your code and you copy your code with a folder into the 53 00:02:37,080 --> 00:02:38,700 Speaker 2: app's directory on CircuitPy. 54 00:02:39,420 --> 00:02:40,300 Speaker 2: And that's all you need to do. 55 00:02:40,420 --> 00:02:43,640 Speaker 2: The next time you launch the Fruit Jam OS launcher, it scans that folder. 56 00:02:43,820 --> 00:02:46,680 Speaker 2: So it will automatically find your app along with all the other ones. 57 00:02:47,080 --> 00:02:48,900 Speaker 2: We'll show your icon right on the launcher there. 58 00:02:49,140 --> 00:02:50,000 Speaker 2: User can launch it. 59 00:02:50,060 --> 00:02:52,340 Speaker 2: And as soon as they launch it, it just executes right into your code. 60 00:02:52,380 --> 00:02:57,660 Speaker 1: code.pye file. I know Cooper you I had Sean Carolan on the show recently who did the 61 00:02:57,750 --> 00:03:02,960 Speaker 1: Pac-Man clone in CircuitPython and you reached out to him and gave him a hand to and submitted a PR 62 00:03:02,970 --> 00:03:08,480 Speaker 1: I believe to get it on the fruit jam. Yeah and actually I want to add to that I did create a repository 63 00:03:09,530 --> 00:03:13,880 Speaker 3: and if viewers aren't familiar with how GitHub works basically repository is like a project right 64 00:03:14,180 --> 00:03:19,520 Speaker 3: I did create a project that's just fruit jam application I was trying to make it as basic as possible 65 00:03:19,700 --> 00:03:24,480 Speaker 3: just to be a place to store all those best practices of how to work with this hardware. 66 00:03:25,080 --> 00:03:30,700 Speaker 3: Of course, many users have contributed applications in their own way that may do things a little bit differently. 67 00:03:30,880 --> 00:03:33,820 Speaker 3: But it's always good to have a good foundation of where to start. 68 00:03:34,300 --> 00:03:38,840 Speaker 3: And that does stuff like initializing the display properly, handling different resolutions, 69 00:03:39,820 --> 00:03:43,160 Speaker 3: taking it in keyboard and mouse input and stuff, which I know we'll get into later. 70 00:03:44,140 --> 00:03:49,480 Speaker 1: Cooper, you were one of the first in the community to release a game for the Fruit Jam, Frutris, a Tetris clone. 71 00:03:50,260 --> 00:03:56,960 Speaker 1: You've also done some work behind the scenes working on USB host for game pads, fruit jam OS, and more like you just mentioned. 72 00:03:57,640 --> 00:03:59,720 Speaker 1: What grabbed you and excited you about the fruit jam? 73 00:04:00,300 --> 00:04:02,100 Speaker 1: So I remember when the fruit jam first came out. 74 00:04:02,240 --> 00:04:05,900 Speaker 3: This was last year, was it August or something? 75 00:04:06,260 --> 00:04:06,740 Speaker 3: It was July. 76 00:04:06,800 --> 00:04:07,260 Speaker 3: Is that, okay. 77 00:04:07,440 --> 00:04:07,640 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. 78 00:04:08,640 --> 00:04:13,560 Speaker 3: And I really wanted to be a part of that like first initial push on it, that wave. 79 00:04:14,020 --> 00:04:19,220 Speaker 3: And I was playing around with Fruit JamOS because at that time, Tim, you had already had it working. 80 00:04:19,340 --> 00:04:21,940 Speaker 3: and a few applications bundled in from the Learnn guides. 81 00:04:22,510 --> 00:04:28,440 Speaker 3: And I have to admit, I wasn't in on the Metro 2350B days, the really early development. 82 00:04:29,320 --> 00:04:32,780 Speaker 3: But a lot of that I know came from that era, I would say. 83 00:04:33,620 --> 00:04:39,060 Speaker 3: And I knew I was like, I have to do something here, you know, something that I can turn around, turn and burn very quickly, 84 00:04:39,540 --> 00:04:41,200 Speaker 3: just because I was excited to be a part of everything. 85 00:04:41,820 --> 00:04:43,260 Speaker 3: And we were lacking Tetris. 86 00:04:43,440 --> 00:04:44,280 Speaker 3: You know, we had a lot of other things. 87 00:04:44,380 --> 00:04:46,580 Speaker 3: I think mine sweeper, breakout, so on. 88 00:04:46,860 --> 00:04:49,020 Speaker 3: And Testris is a different beast. 89 00:04:49,540 --> 00:04:51,420 Speaker 3: because there is some math involved 90 00:04:51,900 --> 00:04:53,180 Speaker 3: and a little bit more management 91 00:04:53,180 --> 00:04:55,560 Speaker 3: in order to make it a really good 92 00:04:55,620 --> 00:04:57,040 Speaker 3: Tetris experience, right? 93 00:04:57,540 --> 00:04:58,380 Speaker 3: And so I did my best. 94 00:04:58,620 --> 00:05:00,260 Speaker 3: And actually, the work on that, 95 00:05:00,340 --> 00:05:02,200 Speaker 3: I had actually kind of stolen for myself. 96 00:05:02,840 --> 00:05:04,360 Speaker 3: I don't know if anyone here is familiar 97 00:05:04,560 --> 00:05:06,100 Speaker 3: with Look Mum, no computer. 98 00:05:06,720 --> 00:05:09,700 Speaker 3: It's kind of a techie, YouTuber, crazy guy. 99 00:05:10,420 --> 00:05:12,000 Speaker 3: He did a thing forever ago 100 00:05:12,540 --> 00:05:13,360 Speaker 3: called the Mega Machine, 101 00:05:14,000 --> 00:05:18,139 Speaker 3: which was, gosh, it was like a 10 by 10 array 102 00:05:18,280 --> 00:05:24,320 Speaker 3: of Game Boys in which you could control the screen of each one of them. 103 00:05:24,860 --> 00:05:29,480 Speaker 3: And he was looking for input back then for like applications, stuff. 104 00:05:29,480 --> 00:05:32,520 Speaker 3: He could run on these like 100 Game Boys, right? 105 00:05:33,020 --> 00:05:38,360 Speaker 3: And I just thought it was very meta to make Tetris that played on like 100 Game Boys, right? 106 00:05:38,840 --> 00:05:43,380 Speaker 3: Anyway, even though that was kind of a silly thing, a lot of the code came from that for the actual 107 00:05:43,700 --> 00:05:47,320 Speaker 3: rotation, the different Tetraminos, things like that. 108 00:05:47,400 --> 00:05:50,300 Speaker 3: So that was very important to contribute in that way. 109 00:05:50,520 --> 00:05:55,020 Speaker 3: And I was able to get that out in, like, I think, less than a week or something, just, you know, off the ground. 110 00:05:55,440 --> 00:05:58,400 Speaker 3: I was really happy with how, you know, people, you know, started playing around with that. 111 00:05:58,480 --> 00:05:59,240 Speaker 3: It was pretty fun. 112 00:05:59,840 --> 00:06:05,520 Speaker 3: And as for those other developments, I mean, there's been a lot of foundation developed by Adafruit, U-Tem, especially. 113 00:06:06,400 --> 00:06:17,360 Speaker 3: For, like, I mean, USB host is really where everything goes down to because CircuitPython has a lot of features on it out of the box, but it's not an operating system. 114 00:06:17,380 --> 00:06:47,340 Speaker 3: really and operating systems typically handle a lot of USB handle I mean obviously keyboard I believe is handled by the supervisor right yep but things that are a little more complex like game pads especially because you know every game pad operates a little bit differently I mean you have X input D input you have it's escaping me now but um it's not X input input there's a there's a mode for K joystick's 115 00:06:47,740 --> 00:06:49,140 Speaker 3: that operate like that that you have to support. 116 00:06:49,280 --> 00:06:53,260 Speaker 3: And then some game pads, including the Adafruit, SNES gamepad, 117 00:06:53,660 --> 00:06:55,220 Speaker 3: operate like in their own weird mode. 118 00:06:55,680 --> 00:06:57,160 Speaker 3: That's just kind of difficult to support. 119 00:06:57,360 --> 00:07:01,700 Speaker 3: So obviously, for every application to include its own driver 120 00:07:01,880 --> 00:07:03,780 Speaker 3: for each one of these devices, it's just not feasible. 121 00:07:04,460 --> 00:07:06,680 Speaker 3: So that's one thing that I was able to contribute 122 00:07:07,000 --> 00:07:11,040 Speaker 3: is creating a library to at least combine that a lot together 123 00:07:11,260 --> 00:07:12,740 Speaker 3: so people just don't have to worry about it. 124 00:07:13,240 --> 00:07:15,460 Speaker 3: And I think that's when CircuitPython shines, 125 00:07:16,500 --> 00:07:18,040 Speaker 3: and you just don't have to worry about it, right? 126 00:07:18,120 --> 00:07:19,940 Speaker 3: You just make your own fun code, 127 00:07:19,940 --> 00:07:21,640 Speaker 3: and you don't have to think so much about, you know, 128 00:07:21,820 --> 00:07:24,360 Speaker 3: specific device input and stuff. 129 00:07:24,900 --> 00:07:25,580 Speaker 1: Dan, what about you? 130 00:07:25,700 --> 00:07:27,400 Speaker 1: What excited you about the Fruit Jam? 131 00:07:28,380 --> 00:07:30,020 Speaker 4: Well, first of all, thanks for having me. 132 00:07:31,260 --> 00:07:33,360 Speaker 4: I'm more on the application end of it 133 00:07:33,480 --> 00:07:34,940 Speaker 4: as opposed to the operating system, 134 00:07:35,060 --> 00:07:39,180 Speaker 4: and so I do a lot of application and user applications. 135 00:07:39,550 --> 00:07:41,580 Speaker 4: And I was really excited about it. 136 00:07:41,930 --> 00:07:43,700 Speaker 4: I mean, I grew up, you know, 137 00:07:43,780 --> 00:07:45,740 Speaker 4: with arcade games, retroarchic. 138 00:07:45,760 --> 00:07:50,840 Speaker 4: arcade games and I guess I could consider myself retro because I'm at that age. 139 00:07:51,600 --> 00:07:58,560 Speaker 4: But that really excited me with the or the different emulators that come out with it. 140 00:07:59,160 --> 00:07:59,940 Speaker 4: I think it's great. 141 00:08:00,620 --> 00:08:04,320 Speaker 4: So I decided to write some games in CircuitPython for it. 142 00:08:04,900 --> 00:08:14,140 Speaker 4: The first one was the Zork Z-Machine, which was something I wrote five or six years ago in Arduino. 143 00:08:14,160 --> 00:08:20,980 Speaker 4: And I decided, well, I'm going to convert that to CircuitPython, see if I can get reasonable performance out of it. 144 00:08:21,020 --> 00:08:21,380 Speaker 4: And I did. 145 00:08:21,620 --> 00:08:31,020 Speaker 4: So I went from there, and then I wrote a moon miner game, which is kind of like the Lunar Lander, if you remember that from the arcades back in the 80s. 146 00:08:32,280 --> 00:08:33,760 Speaker 4: So it's similar to that. 147 00:08:34,479 --> 00:08:36,039 Speaker 4: And then I wrote a couple screensavers. 148 00:08:36,219 --> 00:08:41,860 Speaker 4: So doing a bunch of fun projects, at least for me, I really enjoyed writing them. 149 00:08:42,599 --> 00:08:49,020 Speaker 4: We've got four screens savers so far, and I'm looking at maybe adding more as I find ideas for them. 150 00:08:50,260 --> 00:08:51,740 Speaker 4: And so, yeah, it's been a lot of fun. 151 00:08:52,740 --> 00:08:55,540 Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit more about the four screensavers you've written. 152 00:08:56,020 --> 00:08:57,220 Speaker 1: Can you describe them a little bit? 153 00:08:57,640 --> 00:09:00,420 Speaker 1: And, you know, what worked well about writing them for the fruit jam? 154 00:09:00,540 --> 00:09:02,580 Speaker 1: And were there any challenges that you encountered? 155 00:09:03,960 --> 00:09:07,620 Speaker 4: Well, you know, screensavers go back since the dawn of PCs. 156 00:09:08,840 --> 00:09:12,280 Speaker 4: You know, there was actually a real purpose for them at one time. 157 00:09:12,380 --> 00:09:13,560 Speaker 4: you didn't want to have the screen burn in. 158 00:09:13,660 --> 00:09:17,320 Speaker 4: So now it's more of a fun thing to see on the screen. 159 00:09:17,560 --> 00:09:19,360 Speaker 4: So I wrote four of them. 160 00:09:19,750 --> 00:09:23,520 Speaker 4: I did Starfield screensaver, 161 00:09:23,590 --> 00:09:25,300 Speaker 4: which is kind of like the Star Trek screen, 162 00:09:25,800 --> 00:09:28,320 Speaker 4: you know, with the stars going on the screen. 163 00:09:28,520 --> 00:09:34,460 Speaker 4: And I wrote a maze creator and a real-time solver. 164 00:09:35,200 --> 00:09:40,660 Speaker 4: And that actually came from an Arduino project I wrote for Adafruit, 165 00:09:40,980 --> 00:09:43,660 Speaker 4: probably six years ago, that was also Arduino. 166 00:09:43,780 --> 00:09:46,340 Speaker 4: And that was on a e-paper device. 167 00:09:46,780 --> 00:09:51,300 Speaker 4: So I thought, well, I want to do that one, rewrite that one for CircuitPython. 168 00:09:53,020 --> 00:09:54,640 Speaker 4: And that one turned out really well. 169 00:09:55,799 --> 00:10:00,860 Speaker 4: Then the recent ones I've done is a 15 puzzle screensaver. 170 00:10:01,020 --> 00:10:05,880 Speaker 4: If you ever know the child's toy where you have numbers from 1 to 15 in a grid 171 00:10:06,040 --> 00:10:10,920 Speaker 4: and you slide the tiles around, and I thought, well, this would be great for circuit. 172 00:10:10,940 --> 00:10:18,280 Speaker 4: at Python because it has tile grid and it's really the same concept except you're just taking pieces 173 00:10:18,410 --> 00:10:23,060 Speaker 4: of one image and moving around and I thought well that would be kind of a neat challenge so I did that 174 00:10:23,060 --> 00:10:29,180 Speaker 4: and that turned out really well the latest one I did was just a weather clock it's very stagnant 175 00:10:29,300 --> 00:10:36,440 Speaker 4: there's not much going on other than showing the updating the time and the current weather conditions 176 00:10:36,640 --> 00:10:40,180 Speaker 4: and the temperature so that seemed to be a good screensaver because 177 00:10:41,660 --> 00:10:43,940 Speaker 4: when you're not doing anything 178 00:10:44,210 --> 00:10:46,080 Speaker 4: the time comes up and the weather comes out. 179 00:10:46,080 --> 00:10:47,280 Speaker 4: I thought, that'd be pretty good too. 180 00:10:48,460 --> 00:10:49,580 Speaker 1: Cooper, you mentioned earlier 181 00:10:50,160 --> 00:10:53,300 Speaker 1: that you've done some work about keyboard input and game pads. 182 00:10:54,020 --> 00:10:56,040 Speaker 1: For someone who's used to writing a normal code. 183 00:10:56,040 --> 00:10:59,060 Speaker 1: code.py in CircuitPython and maybe has hooked up a few sensors over 184 00:10:59,220 --> 00:11:02,240 Speaker 1: STEMAQT, how hard is it to code for the Fruit Jam 185 00:11:02,340 --> 00:11:06,260 Speaker 1: to set up things like the display or to use keyboards or game pads? 186 00:11:07,380 --> 00:11:10,040 Speaker 3: Well, if you've ever used display I.O. 187 00:11:10,260 --> 00:11:16,600 Speaker 3: at all for, you know, little OLED displays, black and white, all that kind of, it's the exact same 188 00:11:17,490 --> 00:11:17,600 Speaker 3: API. 189 00:11:17,860 --> 00:11:23,820 Speaker 3: So, loading up bitmaps, drawing shapes with vector, vector I.O, whatever. 190 00:11:25,300 --> 00:11:29,820 Speaker 3: All that kind of stuff, it all uses the exact same principles using tile grid, et cetera. 191 00:11:30,440 --> 00:11:34,760 Speaker 3: In fact, Tim, I know you helped, I believe you helped create a lot of those APIs, right? 192 00:11:35,320 --> 00:11:39,960 Speaker 3: And tile grid in a way almost acts like a Game Boy or something like that in the way that. 193 00:11:40,040 --> 00:11:44,320 Speaker 3: you pick different sprites from a sheet and stuff like that too. 194 00:11:45,560 --> 00:11:52,500 Speaker 3: And then, of course, I know the Adafruit display text library is one that I use on basically every project. 195 00:11:53,060 --> 00:11:57,640 Speaker 3: If you want to write out displays without, I believe you can use terminal I.O. directly. 196 00:11:57,900 --> 00:11:59,220 Speaker 3: And I have done that once or twice. 197 00:11:59,980 --> 00:12:05,480 Speaker 3: But for the most part, you want to use that to get started to write text out to your display, 198 00:12:05,900 --> 00:12:06,860 Speaker 3: depending on what you're trying to do. 199 00:12:07,200 --> 00:12:11,780 Speaker 3: like what those screensaver stand was talking about you probably do principles a little bit 200 00:12:11,960 --> 00:12:15,440 Speaker 3: differently you know you're not working directly with input and stuff like that you kind of needs 201 00:12:15,440 --> 00:12:21,620 Speaker 3: to run itself and so you might not use some of these resources which by the way I did want to 202 00:12:21,860 --> 00:12:26,680 Speaker 3: mention which I love the displays a lot of times I have my fruit jam just running the background while 203 00:12:26,740 --> 00:12:31,080 Speaker 3: I'm working and just running through all those screensavers sometimes random mode and stuff like 204 00:12:31,120 --> 00:12:36,880 Speaker 3: that if you're interested in any of these projects which I know a lot of these resources 205 00:12:36,900 --> 00:12:42,060 Speaker 3: sources come bundled in with Fruit Jam OS, but I do have another application that I know Tim 206 00:12:42,060 --> 00:12:48,000 Speaker 3: and I have been talking about, the library, Fruit Jam library application, which gives you an 207 00:12:48,120 --> 00:12:52,260 Speaker 3: opportunity, because the Fruit Jam, one of the cool things about it is that it has all the bells 208 00:12:52,260 --> 00:12:57,980 Speaker 3: and whistles in it, right? You have Wi-Fi, you have audio, you have HDMI, you have USB host, 209 00:12:58,540 --> 00:13:06,080 Speaker 3: etc. It's its own little computer, right? Neopixel even and GPIO expansion. So that Wi-Fi adds a whole 210 00:13:06,060 --> 00:13:11,080 Speaker 3: new capacity. Well, now you can basically run things on the device itself and get information 211 00:13:11,340 --> 00:13:15,740 Speaker 3: from the web, et cetera, as long as you're connected to Wi-Fi. And so I've been developing this 212 00:13:16,350 --> 00:13:21,320 Speaker 3: library application to make it so that you can download kind of third-party applications, 213 00:13:21,520 --> 00:13:25,860 Speaker 3: maybe outside of the Adafruit space, or maybe in the future, Adafruit would want to host 214 00:13:25,920 --> 00:13:30,220 Speaker 3: some of their own applications through that that are maybe a little bit too big to host directly 215 00:13:30,480 --> 00:13:36,000 Speaker 3: on Fruit Jam OS, you know, in that one download. And so you can download this one. And so you can download 216 00:13:36,060 --> 00:13:40,300 Speaker 3: application, which will allow you to download all the applications, right? It's the idea, right? 217 00:13:40,460 --> 00:13:47,260 Speaker 3: So I know Dan's, a lot of his projects, Z-machine, Moon Miner, right? And those screenshots, 218 00:13:47,440 --> 00:13:52,560 Speaker 3: it actually supports screensavers as well, are all downloadable through there. And eventually, 219 00:13:53,020 --> 00:13:59,160 Speaker 3: I know Tim, we plan on integrating that into the core OS. We're not there yet. Just it's more 220 00:13:59,220 --> 00:14:05,980 Speaker 4: on my plate than anything. But, you know, those are future plans there. Yeah. I think it's great. 221 00:14:06,000 --> 00:14:12,480 Speaker 4: It's a wonderful idea, and I hope you get that out there and incorporate it in a fruit jam. 222 00:14:12,550 --> 00:14:13,320 Speaker 4: I think it's great. 223 00:14:14,060 --> 00:14:19,840 Speaker 4: I think of it more as an app store than a library because you can go and pick and choose what you want to download. 224 00:14:21,140 --> 00:14:21,880 Speaker 3: So it's great. 225 00:14:22,580 --> 00:14:26,420 Speaker 3: It basically is, I don't think we'd want to use the term store per se. 226 00:14:27,880 --> 00:14:29,060 Speaker 3: There's no cash transactions. 227 00:14:30,740 --> 00:14:30,920 Speaker 3: Yeah. 228 00:14:31,200 --> 00:14:32,960 Speaker 2: I'm super excited about the library as well. 229 00:14:33,020 --> 00:14:34,660 Speaker 2: I'm glad you brought it up, Cooper. 230 00:14:35,500 --> 00:14:38,780 Speaker 2: And yeah, for folks listening, the goal is we're going to move that into Fruit JamOS. 231 00:14:39,020 --> 00:14:45,940 Speaker 2: So then that will be the library itself will be bundled in and you'll be able to launch it right out of the gate and then download further stuff from there. 232 00:14:46,440 --> 00:14:49,680 Speaker 2: And yeah, I did, I think I suggested to change name. 233 00:14:49,720 --> 00:14:52,100 Speaker 2: And maybe even was App Store originally. 234 00:14:53,160 --> 00:14:56,240 Speaker 2: And I wanted to change it to library for both the reason Cooper mentioned. 235 00:14:57,140 --> 00:15:01,780 Speaker 2: We don't intend to sell anything through there, but also just we don't want to run a foul of Apple necessarily. 236 00:15:02,020 --> 00:15:02,120 Speaker 2: Right. 237 00:15:02,180 --> 00:15:03,500 Speaker 2: They already have App Store lockdown. 238 00:15:03,520 --> 00:15:12,320 Speaker 2: But to your point, Dan, it definitely is like exact same concept of App Store, Google Play Store, exact same idea where you can distribute apps through there. 239 00:15:13,600 --> 00:15:14,100 Speaker 3: I think you're right. 240 00:15:14,180 --> 00:15:15,620 Speaker 3: I think we did change it at one point. 241 00:15:16,020 --> 00:15:16,800 Speaker 3: But I like library. 242 00:15:17,620 --> 00:15:18,600 Speaker 3: It's like you're checking out a book. 243 00:15:19,420 --> 00:15:20,980 Speaker 2: Yeah, I liked library as well. 244 00:15:21,220 --> 00:15:21,300 Speaker 2: Yeah. 245 00:15:21,460 --> 00:15:30,080 Speaker 3: And on top of that, some of the applications, like there's another game that I helped develop with my partner who did all the writing and everything called Speed Dating, right? 246 00:15:30,180 --> 00:15:33,400 Speaker 3: Which is like a dating sim kind of featuring. 247 00:15:33,460 --> 00:15:37,240 Speaker 3: featuring Blinka, well, kind of featuring Blinka and a bunch of other snakes and stuff. 248 00:15:37,880 --> 00:15:41,120 Speaker 3: And that, there's just, there's just too much graphically and audio-wise. 249 00:15:41,280 --> 00:15:43,020 Speaker 3: Some, the audio files are kind of big. 250 00:15:43,680 --> 00:15:47,840 Speaker 3: I don't think it wouldn't necessarily max out the flash memory on the device or anything, 251 00:15:48,160 --> 00:15:52,720 Speaker 3: but it would be significant enough that would be over half of the Fruit JamOS. 252 00:15:52,900 --> 00:15:56,700 Speaker 3: So it's just not a good idea to bundle in with the core download. 253 00:15:57,920 --> 00:16:03,400 Speaker 3: And plus the library, there's still more work to be done, but you can download. 254 00:16:03,440 --> 00:16:06,420 Speaker 3: to either the flash storage directly on the device 255 00:16:06,620 --> 00:16:08,420 Speaker 3: or to an SD card, right? 256 00:16:08,820 --> 00:16:10,540 Speaker 3: So then you kind of remove the limits 257 00:16:11,270 --> 00:16:11,740 Speaker 3: of what, you know, 258 00:16:11,860 --> 00:16:14,100 Speaker 3: the flash storage limits of the device. 259 00:16:15,010 --> 00:16:16,340 Speaker 3: And one of these days, 260 00:16:16,420 --> 00:16:18,080 Speaker 3: I could see somebody starting to dive 261 00:16:18,730 --> 00:16:21,180 Speaker 3: into more intensive graphically applications 262 00:16:21,680 --> 00:16:22,680 Speaker 3: and things like that 263 00:16:22,820 --> 00:16:25,660 Speaker 3: that may exceed the base storage 264 00:16:25,860 --> 00:16:26,740 Speaker 3: of even the fruit jam, 265 00:16:26,840 --> 00:16:29,020 Speaker 3: which I think, was it eight, 16 megabytes? 266 00:16:29,540 --> 00:16:31,700 Speaker 3: I believe it's 16 megs flash, yeah, 267 00:16:31,880 --> 00:16:32,660 Speaker 3: it's quite big. 268 00:16:33,160 --> 00:16:36,920 Speaker 3: It's quite big, but you put in a 4-gigabyte SD card, 269 00:16:37,080 --> 00:16:39,800 Speaker 3: then you have basically infinite storage in a way. 270 00:16:40,200 --> 00:16:42,740 Speaker 2: To your point there, I think the SD card and the Wi-Fi as well, 271 00:16:42,920 --> 00:16:45,220 Speaker 2: the Wi-Fi was mentioned earlier with the weather screensaver. 272 00:16:45,340 --> 00:16:48,300 Speaker 2: I think those two things bring a lot to the table for the Fruit Jam, 273 00:16:48,400 --> 00:16:50,420 Speaker 2: being able to get stuff off of the internet 274 00:16:50,680 --> 00:16:53,580 Speaker 2: and being able to cache media files, 275 00:16:53,760 --> 00:16:55,600 Speaker 2: either downloaded stuff from the internet to cache, 276 00:16:55,780 --> 00:16:59,740 Speaker 2: or like you're saying, apps with pre-built assets or stuff like that, 277 00:17:00,020 --> 00:17:03,100 Speaker 2: those could fit on the SD card and free up a lot of. 278 00:17:03,120 --> 00:17:09,140 Speaker 2: of space and flash. So those are two of my top picks for peripherals on the fruit jam. And the Wi-Fi, 279 00:17:09,560 --> 00:17:15,500 Speaker 2: worth mentioning, the Wi-Fi was a relatively late addition to the Fruit Jam. There were a couple of 280 00:17:15,699 --> 00:17:20,600 Speaker 2: revisions that came out, not publicly, that they were never sold, but there were internal ones we 281 00:17:20,600 --> 00:17:26,079 Speaker 2: were working on where there was no Wi-Fi. There was originally an I-SPI cable connector to be 282 00:17:26,140 --> 00:17:32,600 Speaker 2: able to connect like TFT cables over SPI. And then Lady Ada was playing around with it and decided, 283 00:17:32,800 --> 00:17:35,540 Speaker 2: Wi-Fi would be super cool to have this whole little mini-computer. 284 00:17:36,050 --> 00:17:38,480 Speaker 2: And I definitely think that was the right call in hindsight. 285 00:17:39,040 --> 00:17:40,520 Speaker 2: The Wi-Fi adds a lot to it for sure. 286 00:17:41,180 --> 00:17:41,840 Speaker 3: I think so too. 287 00:17:42,200 --> 00:17:46,260 Speaker 3: I mean, there is GPIO expansion, and I believe there's some I-2C ports and stuff. 288 00:17:46,940 --> 00:17:49,820 Speaker 3: And heck, I think there's a STEMA QT port too. 289 00:17:50,420 --> 00:17:51,120 Speaker 3: Yep, definitely. 290 00:17:51,420 --> 00:17:57,000 Speaker 3: So if really having another display on top of the HTML output is necessary, 291 00:17:57,160 --> 00:18:01,040 Speaker 3: I'm sure you could just throw on a little SSD 1306 or something. 292 00:18:02,580 --> 00:18:05,600 Speaker 2: Yep, yeah, we've talked about like shields for the top as well. 293 00:18:05,780 --> 00:18:08,720 Speaker 2: There's two rows, I don't know if it's 20 pins or however many pins, 294 00:18:08,760 --> 00:18:10,520 Speaker 2: but there are two rows of GPIO pins. 295 00:18:11,420 --> 00:18:15,400 Speaker 2: At some point, we may have a little shield or a hat or something that you could stick on the top 296 00:18:15,840 --> 00:18:17,360 Speaker 2: to add TFT screen. 297 00:18:17,540 --> 00:18:23,180 Speaker 2: And I'm hoping for a little sort of game style, like game gear with the screen in the middle 298 00:18:23,340 --> 00:18:25,980 Speaker 2: and then Dpad and A.B button on the right. 299 00:18:26,440 --> 00:18:28,200 Speaker 2: So maybe something like that. 300 00:18:29,300 --> 00:18:31,780 Speaker 2: Do you think there's no battery? 301 00:18:32,420 --> 00:18:34,220 Speaker 3: capabilities on the device, is there? 302 00:18:34,520 --> 00:18:38,140 Speaker 2: That is correct. Yeah, as far as I know, there's no charging. 303 00:18:38,380 --> 00:18:44,580 Speaker 2: So unlike the feathers, which have built-in charging and stuff, there's no JST connector 304 00:18:44,740 --> 00:18:48,160 Speaker 2: for a battery and no built-in charging. So you have to use, like, USB battery or something 305 00:18:48,340 --> 00:18:49,380 Speaker 2: to go mobile with it. 306 00:18:49,880 --> 00:18:54,400 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great idea, though. I know one I had, is it would be really, granted, you know, 307 00:18:54,400 --> 00:18:58,600 Speaker 3: you have the USB host support, which is awesome. But it would be really cool to have a little 308 00:18:58,760 --> 00:19:01,480 Speaker 3: hat that sticks on top, and you can plug in SNES controllers. 309 00:19:01,760 --> 00:19:03,260 Speaker 3: or NES or something like that. 310 00:19:03,480 --> 00:19:04,340 Speaker 3: That would be really cool too. 311 00:19:05,180 --> 00:19:07,100 Speaker 3: Maybe not a huge difference over the USB, 312 00:19:07,340 --> 00:19:08,400 Speaker 3: but it would be nice regardless. 313 00:19:09,340 --> 00:19:09,780 Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. 314 00:19:10,080 --> 00:19:15,020 Speaker 4: It reminds me at the old Atari cartridge location 315 00:19:15,160 --> 00:19:18,880 Speaker 4: where you stick in a cartridge where the ports are. 316 00:19:19,080 --> 00:19:21,780 Speaker 4: So it goes back to the retro styling. 317 00:19:22,620 --> 00:19:23,780 Speaker 3: Definitely, definitely. 318 00:19:24,960 --> 00:19:27,040 Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, there's a lot of GPIO on there. 319 00:19:27,140 --> 00:19:31,140 Speaker 3: I bet you could almost do kind of a basic cartridge loading. 320 00:19:32,040 --> 00:19:34,560 Speaker 3: thing. We're definitely deep dive in here. 321 00:19:37,120 --> 00:19:40,500 Speaker 3: Just a few address lines, maybe some data lines. I don't know. 322 00:19:41,220 --> 00:19:43,160 Speaker 3: Get an e-prom on there. Who knows? 323 00:19:44,480 --> 00:19:55,440 Speaker 1: Speaking of displays, one of the things that I've seen, and I think other people may have run into as well, is that display out of resolution error that comes up if you don't have the right monitor plugged into a fruit jam. 324 00:19:56,860 --> 00:19:59,960 Speaker 1: As a dev, how do you code for different display sizes? 325 00:20:00,920 --> 00:20:02,940 Speaker 1: on the Fruit Jam in CircuitPython itself. 326 00:20:04,200 --> 00:20:04,980 Speaker 1: Yeah, good question. 327 00:20:05,240 --> 00:20:06,920 Speaker 2: So it is, it's a little tricky 328 00:20:07,080 --> 00:20:09,420 Speaker 2: because it can't be done, 329 00:20:10,160 --> 00:20:14,080 Speaker 2: or I will say it's not set up to be super automatic. 330 00:20:14,400 --> 00:20:17,100 Speaker 2: So lots of devices, lots of modern devices, 331 00:20:17,260 --> 00:20:18,480 Speaker 2: when you plug them into a screen, 332 00:20:18,620 --> 00:20:20,960 Speaker 2: they'll kind of query the screen to figure out what size it is 333 00:20:21,040 --> 00:20:23,080 Speaker 2: and then select something that they both agree on. 334 00:20:23,600 --> 00:20:25,660 Speaker 2: The Fruit Jam has a few things that make it tricky. 335 00:20:25,820 --> 00:20:29,320 Speaker 2: One is that it's working at relatively small resolutions 336 00:20:29,340 --> 00:20:35,320 Speaker 2: by today's standards at least, like 640 by 480 or 320 by 240 even, which ends up getting 337 00:20:36,650 --> 00:20:40,980 Speaker 2: doubled anyways. So those are relatively small sizes. There are some screens out there today if you 338 00:20:41,080 --> 00:20:45,420 Speaker 2: just go to the store, your average electronics store today and you buy sort of the cheapest 339 00:20:45,900 --> 00:20:50,980 Speaker 2: monitor that supports HDMI. It may not support some of those smaller ones. It may be only 1920 340 00:20:51,160 --> 00:20:57,740 Speaker 2: by 1080 or 1280p, just modern sizes. And so that's when it will pop up, I think, the error like 341 00:20:57,760 --> 00:21:00,840 Speaker 2: you're talking about where you'll plug it in and it will say, you know, we can't recognize this 342 00:21:01,400 --> 00:21:07,500 Speaker 2: format or something like that. You can actually connect to it through I-2C. So one of the things that 343 00:21:07,700 --> 00:21:13,920 Speaker 2: HDMI does is it has, I think it's called Edid. Edid, E-D-I-D is the acronym. And I'm not 100% sure 344 00:21:14,020 --> 00:21:18,280 Speaker 2: what all is inside of it, but there is a little data channel inside of there. And you can query 345 00:21:18,620 --> 00:21:24,620 Speaker 2: the screen to ask it like what resolutions it supports. And so you could write code that would 346 00:21:24,700 --> 00:21:27,720 Speaker 2: do some of that and try to select one. The deal is that the for 347 00:21:27,740 --> 00:21:30,900 Speaker 2: Jam is, again, it's only doing those smaller screens. 348 00:21:31,910 --> 00:21:36,200 Speaker 2: And so then even if you ask the screen what it supports, it may still not support something that 349 00:21:36,620 --> 00:21:37,940 Speaker 2: works for that smaller size. 350 00:21:38,560 --> 00:21:39,580 Speaker 2: So that's one of the tricky bits. 351 00:21:39,660 --> 00:21:44,220 Speaker 2: And then in terms of like, what is the developer actually, what do you have control over that's 352 00:21:44,340 --> 00:21:44,700 Speaker 2: easy to do? 353 00:21:45,160 --> 00:21:49,220 Speaker 2: It's super easy to change the resolution between the ones that are supported by the fruit jam. 354 00:21:49,340 --> 00:21:51,140 Speaker 2: So there's a few different ways that works. 355 00:21:51,880 --> 00:21:55,320 Speaker 2: One of them is the user gets some level of control inside of settings. 356 00:21:55,640 --> 00:21:56,020 Speaker 2: Toml. 357 00:21:56,420 --> 00:22:06,540 Speaker 2: You can actually set a configuration line where the user can say, you know, I prefer the 360 size screen, or I prefer the 320 by 240, or I prefer the 640 by 480. 358 00:22:06,820 --> 00:22:08,280 Speaker 2: So you can put that in there. 359 00:22:08,560 --> 00:22:12,840 Speaker 2: And then as a developer, when you're working on your app, you can read the setting there. 360 00:22:12,960 --> 00:22:15,960 Speaker 2: And kind of like the ideal thing would be you follow whatever the user wants. 361 00:22:16,100 --> 00:22:25,440 Speaker 2: But maybe if you're making a game or something and you really have to have a specific screen size for your assets, then you can go and sort of just change the configuration on the display. 362 00:22:25,980 --> 00:22:28,400 Speaker 2: And inside of the Fruit Jam library, 363 00:22:28,660 --> 00:22:32,120 Speaker 2: so we have a Fruit Jam library that's just AdaFruit underscore Fruit Jam. 364 00:22:32,600 --> 00:22:36,500 Speaker 2: It's sort of like a Fruit Jam version of the portal-based libraries 365 00:22:36,680 --> 00:22:41,280 Speaker 2: for folks that are familiar with like the Pi Portal and the bunch of the other ones, 366 00:22:41,680 --> 00:22:42,180 Speaker 2: Fun House. 367 00:22:42,340 --> 00:22:43,740 Speaker 2: There's a bunch of them that have those libraries. 368 00:22:43,860 --> 00:22:48,060 Speaker 2: So Fruit Jam Library has a bunch of Fruit Jam hardware-specific stuff in it, 369 00:22:48,160 --> 00:22:52,100 Speaker 2: and one of the things that it provides is a high-level reconfigure display. 370 00:22:52,340 --> 00:22:53,740 Speaker 2: So I forget the exact name of the function, 371 00:22:53,880 --> 00:22:55,260 Speaker 2: but you can call like Configure Display. 372 00:22:55,860 --> 00:22:57,120 Speaker 2: pass it a width and height, 373 00:22:57,300 --> 00:23:00,280 Speaker 2: and that's sort of the one-liner that you need as a developer 374 00:23:00,800 --> 00:23:03,160 Speaker 2: to actually specify the size for your own app, 375 00:23:04,020 --> 00:23:07,120 Speaker 2: is just pop that in and say 320, 240 or whatever size you want. 376 00:23:07,880 --> 00:23:13,240 Speaker 3: And a lot of applications do default to that 320 by 240 game-wise and stuff, 377 00:23:13,280 --> 00:23:17,260 Speaker 3: because that is kind of the easiest to work with in an arcade game format. 378 00:23:18,200 --> 00:23:20,900 Speaker 3: However, it is, you can support all the support. 379 00:23:21,020 --> 00:23:22,820 Speaker 3: There's four different resolutions, I believe, 380 00:23:23,000 --> 00:23:25,360 Speaker 3: that the Fruit Jam really supports within CircuitPy. 381 00:23:25,380 --> 00:23:31,140 Speaker 3: Python. And it is possible to have support for all those. But it can be a challenge. In fact, 382 00:23:31,400 --> 00:23:38,700 Speaker 3: for the Fruit Jam version of Pac-Man that we have, which I believe I worked on with Retired Wizard, 383 00:23:39,100 --> 00:23:44,040 Speaker 3: it took a lot of testing of all those different resolutions and reformatting, especially with that, 384 00:23:44,100 --> 00:23:48,940 Speaker 3: because it's kind of a, was it, Tate style game, you know, with its vertical layout. It was difficult 385 00:23:49,140 --> 00:23:55,340 Speaker 3: to get that to fit exactly right. But with clever use of display IOs, the group's 386 00:23:55,380 --> 00:24:00,840 Speaker 3: scaling property, you can kind of achieve what you need to do. But you do get a little bit of 387 00:24:01,280 --> 00:24:06,200 Speaker 3: a performance hit whenever you're scaling objects just because it has to copy all those buffers 388 00:24:06,360 --> 00:24:11,520 Speaker 1: and stuff. What are some other challenges for developers to look out for when developing for 389 00:24:11,620 --> 00:24:19,440 Speaker 1: the fruit jam? I will take a quick one, which would be USB stuff. I know we talked to a lot about 390 00:24:19,620 --> 00:24:24,840 Speaker 2: USB hosts earlier and where the responsibility lies between CircuitPython core. 391 00:24:25,320 --> 00:24:28,780 Speaker 2: handling the USB versus you as an application developer 392 00:24:29,040 --> 00:24:30,140 Speaker 2: having to handle it in your own app. 393 00:24:30,720 --> 00:24:31,940 Speaker 2: And so I think we mentioned before 394 00:24:32,100 --> 00:24:34,040 Speaker 2: that keyboard is handled by the core. 395 00:24:34,200 --> 00:24:36,200 Speaker 2: So if you just need basic keystrokes, 396 00:24:36,940 --> 00:24:37,760 Speaker 2: you know, you just want to know 397 00:24:37,840 --> 00:24:39,940 Speaker 2: when the user presses on the arrow keys 398 00:24:40,200 --> 00:24:42,100 Speaker 2: or when they type in a message. 399 00:24:42,640 --> 00:24:44,200 Speaker 2: You can do that very easily. 400 00:24:44,540 --> 00:24:45,880 Speaker 2: You actually just see the input 401 00:24:46,020 --> 00:24:47,900 Speaker 2: as though it came in over the serial line 402 00:24:48,610 --> 00:24:50,100 Speaker 2: if you were writing a C-Python code. 403 00:24:50,200 --> 00:24:53,200 Speaker 2: So you can kind of very easily query the keyboard 404 00:24:53,460 --> 00:24:54,220 Speaker 2: to get those keys 405 00:24:54,280 --> 00:24:55,320 Speaker 2: that have been pressed. 406 00:24:56,020 --> 00:24:57,200 Speaker 2: What we don't have in the core 407 00:24:57,320 --> 00:24:59,040 Speaker 2: is we don't have support for mice 408 00:24:59,200 --> 00:25:01,060 Speaker 2: or any other kind of peripherals. 409 00:25:01,120 --> 00:25:02,160 Speaker 2: So if you want to have a mice, 410 00:25:02,360 --> 00:25:04,780 Speaker 2: a mouse, or a game pad in your game, 411 00:25:04,860 --> 00:25:07,640 Speaker 2: you'll have to have code inside of your own code. 412 00:25:07,840 --> 00:25:09,980 Speaker 2: code.py that initializes it and handles it. 413 00:25:10,100 --> 00:25:11,540 Speaker 2: We do have helper libraries and stuff, 414 00:25:11,960 --> 00:25:13,300 Speaker 2: but it's something you've got to put in your code. 415 00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:16,440 Speaker 2: And then your other sort of choice 416 00:25:16,580 --> 00:25:18,640 Speaker 2: is if you need really fine-grained control. 417 00:25:18,900 --> 00:25:20,500 Speaker 2: So it's really easy to find out 418 00:25:21,380 --> 00:25:22,900 Speaker 2: that the arrow key has been pressed 419 00:25:23,020 --> 00:25:24,200 Speaker 2: or that the user typed the word, 420 00:25:24,220 --> 00:25:29,940 Speaker 2: hello. But if you really, you know, if you think about some video games, you want to know up and down, 421 00:25:30,060 --> 00:25:33,920 Speaker 2: right? You want to know, like, when the key is pressed, while it's held down, and then you want 422 00:25:33,940 --> 00:25:38,020 Speaker 2: to know when it's released. For instance, if you want to have a character like run around a world 423 00:25:38,220 --> 00:25:44,580 Speaker 2: using a D-pad, that's kind of how it works, you know, in most games by default. And if you do 424 00:25:44,620 --> 00:25:50,779 Speaker 2: want that control where you need to know the down, the hold, the up, that is a little bit deeper 425 00:25:50,840 --> 00:25:55,500 Speaker 2: of a level. So the way that the keyboard is hooked up by default in CircuitPython, you don't get that 426 00:25:56,080 --> 00:26:01,240 Speaker 2: stuff. But what you can do is sort of, again, sort of reconfigure it. You can have it undo the default 427 00:26:01,440 --> 00:26:07,180 Speaker 2: configuration and you can get lower level control where you actually get sort of raw HID events as needed. 428 00:26:07,300 --> 00:26:12,000 Speaker 2: And you can definitely see, you know, key went down, key has been held down, and then key is released 429 00:26:12,840 --> 00:26:17,500 Speaker 2: finally. So you could do that stuff. So that is one gotcha that I will throw out is depending on how you 430 00:26:17,580 --> 00:26:20,760 Speaker 2: want to do that input. You may need to use that slightly lower. 431 00:26:20,780 --> 00:26:22,900 Speaker 2: level API for the keyboard. 432 00:26:23,880 --> 00:26:28,280 Speaker 3: I've actually debated extending the GamePad Library to include an option. 433 00:26:28,480 --> 00:26:34,180 Speaker 3: It'd have to be a flag you turn on, but to allow it to automatically detach the keyboard 434 00:26:34,380 --> 00:26:37,360 Speaker 3: and use that as a game pad input, quote unquote. 435 00:26:38,260 --> 00:26:38,900 Speaker 3: Yeah, that would be cool. 436 00:26:39,340 --> 00:26:39,920 Speaker 3: It would be cool. 437 00:26:40,120 --> 00:26:41,060 Speaker 3: It just hasn't happened. 438 00:26:41,140 --> 00:26:44,420 Speaker 3: Have you played around with that yet, Tim, in any of your applications? 439 00:26:45,440 --> 00:26:46,340 Speaker 3: The GamePad Library? 440 00:26:46,470 --> 00:26:48,980 Speaker 3: No, no, directly accessing keyboard events. 441 00:26:49,600 --> 00:26:51,240 Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, a little bit. 442 00:26:51,360 --> 00:26:57,620 Speaker 2: Yeah, so I have, I did, I don't think I have done it in any of my games. 443 00:26:57,980 --> 00:27:03,980 Speaker 2: So I did, the main game that I have worked on more recently uses the D-pad. 444 00:27:04,120 --> 00:27:10,040 Speaker 2: Although, you know, I think the Flappy Nyan Cat one, maybe the Flappy Nyan Cat, I think, does actually pull the lower level one. 445 00:27:10,840 --> 00:27:12,860 Speaker 2: No, that's not true, though, because you don't hold the button down. 446 00:27:13,140 --> 00:27:13,920 Speaker 2: I don't think that's true. 447 00:27:14,040 --> 00:27:15,500 Speaker 2: Sorry, yeah, I think I misremembered that part. 448 00:27:16,080 --> 00:27:19,420 Speaker 2: I don't think I have done the lower-level keyboard thing for any of my games, 449 00:27:19,560 --> 00:27:21,300 Speaker 2: but I am familiar with the code for it 450 00:27:21,440 --> 00:27:23,140 Speaker 2: because I did the keyboard guide 451 00:27:23,620 --> 00:27:25,920 Speaker 2: whenever we first launched the fruit jam 452 00:27:26,880 --> 00:27:27,720 Speaker 2: or I should say 453 00:27:27,840 --> 00:27:29,860 Speaker 2: when we eventually launched the Ada box 454 00:27:29,920 --> 00:27:31,320 Speaker 2: the box came with a keyboard, 455 00:27:31,540 --> 00:27:33,460 Speaker 2: it came with a mouse and it came with the keyboard. 456 00:27:34,420 --> 00:27:36,700 Speaker 2: And when we first got the fruit jams in stock in the store, 457 00:27:36,800 --> 00:27:38,700 Speaker 2: we also got some of those other peripherals. 458 00:27:38,820 --> 00:27:40,820 Speaker 2: And so we wrote guides around the mouse and the keyboard 459 00:27:41,360 --> 00:27:43,180 Speaker 2: that have all the different ways you can hook them up. 460 00:27:43,260 --> 00:27:44,840 Speaker 2: So I was familiar with it from that, 461 00:27:45,260 --> 00:27:49,380 Speaker 2: but I don't believe I have actually used it in a game specifically yet. 462 00:27:49,780 --> 00:27:56,280 Speaker 3: Yeah, I myself, I just hadn't hit a point in which I really needed it yet, so I hadn't really worked on it. 463 00:27:57,420 --> 00:28:12,880 Speaker 3: I would like to add to that question, though, you know, CircuitPython, these microcontrollers are super powerful for what they are, but there is a limit to how much of the screen you can draw in one time without, you know, without breaking that 30, you know, hertz cap or whatever. 464 00:28:13,880 --> 00:28:19,380 Speaker 3: And so you kind of have to be careful when you're dealing with more complex scenarios to only update, you know, 465 00:28:19,540 --> 00:28:21,660 Speaker 3: certain parts of the screen at a time. 466 00:28:21,760 --> 00:28:23,080 Speaker 3: And the more that you can limit that, 467 00:28:23,230 --> 00:28:25,280 Speaker 3: the better your game will feel and run. 468 00:28:26,020 --> 00:28:28,300 Speaker 3: That's why puzzle games work really well 469 00:28:28,440 --> 00:28:29,460 Speaker 3: because a lot of times you're only dealing 470 00:28:29,560 --> 00:28:30,640 Speaker 3: one thing at a time. 471 00:28:31,440 --> 00:28:32,080 Speaker 3: So it's not that hard. 472 00:28:32,200 --> 00:28:33,760 Speaker 3: But when getting into action games, 473 00:28:34,380 --> 00:28:35,520 Speaker 3: like if you're doing screens, 474 00:28:35,730 --> 00:28:37,180 Speaker 3: you know, side scrolling and stuff, 475 00:28:37,480 --> 00:28:38,500 Speaker 3: it's probably possible. 476 00:28:39,660 --> 00:28:42,260 Speaker 3: But you'll have some challenges working with that 477 00:28:42,730 --> 00:28:44,280 Speaker 3: to get it to run really smoothly. 478 00:28:44,780 --> 00:28:47,500 Speaker 3: I know I've been able to get some action scenarios working 479 00:28:47,900 --> 00:28:49,360 Speaker 3: in which you're just moving the characters 480 00:28:49,380 --> 00:28:51,020 Speaker 3: around and that works really well. 481 00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:53,360 Speaker 3: Actually, one example, speaking of 482 00:28:53,500 --> 00:28:55,120 Speaker 3: screen savers, I did make one 483 00:28:55,300 --> 00:28:57,380 Speaker 3: screen saver, it's the mystify 484 00:28:57,620 --> 00:28:59,340 Speaker 3: screen saver from like the, I don't know, 485 00:28:59,540 --> 00:29:00,920 Speaker 3: Windows XP days, right? 486 00:29:01,580 --> 00:29:02,860 Speaker 3: Which is a little bit beyond, because I know 487 00:29:03,120 --> 00:29:05,080 Speaker 3: Fruit JamOS comes with a lot of, you know, flying 488 00:29:05,220 --> 00:29:07,300 Speaker 3: toasters and stuff, the more like Macintosh 489 00:29:07,440 --> 00:29:09,200 Speaker 3: classics. And so I wanted to like get 490 00:29:09,260 --> 00:29:10,980 Speaker 3: something from a different era, right? 491 00:29:11,540 --> 00:29:13,200 Speaker 3: Although it was pretty, it was surprisingly 492 00:29:13,400 --> 00:29:14,740 Speaker 3: easy to program with 493 00:29:15,799 --> 00:29:17,360 Speaker 3: vectorio Polygons and stuff like that 494 00:29:17,440 --> 00:29:18,540 Speaker 3: to get that effect. 495 00:29:19,300 --> 00:29:20,500 Speaker 3: it runs kind of slow 496 00:29:21,380 --> 00:29:22,640 Speaker 3: I'm surprising because every 497 00:29:23,060 --> 00:29:24,780 Speaker 3: in order to do the polygons correctly 498 00:29:24,880 --> 00:29:26,580 Speaker 3: and fill that entire screen with your 499 00:29:26,900 --> 00:29:28,500 Speaker 3: I don't know if you all are familiar with that 500 00:29:28,960 --> 00:29:30,460 Speaker 3: that style of screen saver 501 00:29:31,060 --> 00:29:32,660 Speaker 3: but you basically have to redraw the screen 502 00:29:32,760 --> 00:29:34,640 Speaker 3: for every frame so it's kind of 503 00:29:34,740 --> 00:29:36,680 Speaker 3: like maybe three four frames 504 00:29:36,760 --> 00:29:38,580 Speaker 3: per second but it still 505 00:29:38,640 --> 00:29:40,540 Speaker 3: looks cool so I decided to publish it 506 00:29:40,760 --> 00:29:42,580 Speaker 3: regardless but it's something 507 00:29:42,580 --> 00:29:44,580 Speaker 3: to be aware of. Yeah I ran into 508 00:29:44,700 --> 00:29:45,880 Speaker 4: the screen scrolling 509 00:29:46,620 --> 00:29:48,580 Speaker 4: issue with the moon miner 510 00:29:48,580 --> 00:29:55,780 Speaker 4: game. I initially wanted to have a screen scrolling when the ship is moving around the planet. 511 00:29:56,520 --> 00:30:02,940 Speaker 4: And I also wanted a high resolution because I have this heads-up display of these statistics that are running. 512 00:30:04,540 --> 00:30:10,180 Speaker 4: And it's 640 by 480 and sliding screens just did not work out for me. 513 00:30:10,320 --> 00:30:15,480 Speaker 4: So I changed the course and went with paging one page to the other. 514 00:30:15,580 --> 00:30:18,560 Speaker 4: When you get to the right side of the screen, it'll switch to the left side. 515 00:30:18,580 --> 00:30:20,140 Speaker 4: So it worked out. 516 00:30:20,330 --> 00:30:28,640 Speaker 4: But yeah, the higher resolution, you go, the more pixels you got to deal with, the more performance issues that you may run into. 517 00:30:30,240 --> 00:30:32,320 Speaker 3: But, you know, limitations breed creativity. 518 00:30:32,800 --> 00:30:32,900 Speaker 3: Yeah. 519 00:30:33,360 --> 00:30:34,740 Speaker 3: So I think that's a part of the fun. 520 00:30:35,170 --> 00:30:40,760 Speaker 3: If there were no limitation, if it was just a black box, I could just do anything, it wouldn't be as fun. 521 00:30:41,820 --> 00:30:43,880 Speaker 1: Well, that is the fun of working with microcontrollers. 522 00:30:44,260 --> 00:30:47,140 Speaker 1: It's the constraints that you're under and what can you do with so little. 523 00:30:47,680 --> 00:30:48,100 Speaker 1: Exactly. 524 00:30:48,400 --> 00:30:51,500 Speaker 4: And a nice thing about screensavers, you don't have to worry about the keyboard. 525 00:30:52,140 --> 00:30:55,200 Speaker 4: That's all taking care of at the operating system level. 526 00:30:55,300 --> 00:30:57,420 Speaker 4: Somebody touches a key, your program's gone. 527 00:30:57,580 --> 00:30:59,180 Speaker 4: And so it's doing something else. 528 00:31:00,380 --> 00:31:00,620 Speaker 4: Totally. 529 00:31:01,140 --> 00:31:05,180 Speaker 1: What advice would you have for someone interested in creating a gamer application for the fruit jam? 530 00:31:06,080 --> 00:31:09,040 Speaker 4: Well, you'd need to get one for one thing. 531 00:31:09,760 --> 00:31:15,940 Speaker 4: And right now, I'm surprised, like, they're still hard to get after, since August. 532 00:31:16,840 --> 00:31:18,360 Speaker 3: That's not entirely true, though. 533 00:31:18,800 --> 00:31:24,260 Speaker 3: One thing I was doing some work on recently, in order to help iteration of developing this stuff, 534 00:31:24,740 --> 00:31:32,020 Speaker 3: it's actually possible to get some components of a fruit jam application running within Blinka, right, 535 00:31:32,120 --> 00:31:35,280 Speaker 3: using Tim, your PyGame display library. 536 00:31:35,880 --> 00:31:40,920 Speaker 3: You can kind of simulate the environment and, I don't know, work with it that way. 537 00:31:41,260 --> 00:31:45,480 Speaker 3: You still should get a fruit jam, but you can at least get started. 538 00:31:46,580 --> 00:31:52,320 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, even generally, that's one of the things that brought me to CircuitPython was that portability. 539 00:31:52,500 --> 00:31:58,300 Speaker 2: Like not everything that works on PC, normal Python works in CircuitPython, but lots of the stuff is familiar. 540 00:31:58,560 --> 00:32:03,680 Speaker 2: So yeah, we have some ways to try to do that development on the PC or on other hardware. 541 00:32:03,840 --> 00:32:09,660 Speaker 2: Like it was thrown out earlier, the Metro, the Metro RP 2350 days before the Fruit Jam was out. 542 00:32:10,020 --> 00:32:15,280 Speaker 2: We had the Metro RP 2350 and you could actually hook up enough hardware to that to where it can, 543 00:32:15,340 --> 00:32:19,920 Speaker 2: basically be a fruit jam. You would need the Wi-Fi and the display, 544 00:32:20,160 --> 00:32:23,280 Speaker 2: HDMI stuff. But there was USB connector, so you could do all of that. 545 00:32:24,200 --> 00:32:28,560 Speaker 2: Back to the question about the advice for making a game, I think one of my big pieces of 546 00:32:28,720 --> 00:32:33,800 Speaker 2: advice is kind of explore the different display API. So we talked a little bit about this, 547 00:32:33,920 --> 00:32:39,340 Speaker 2: about how much your, how many different things on the screen are moving at once. And if you can 548 00:32:39,540 --> 00:32:44,460 Speaker 2: limit it to just one or two things moving, you have a better time. But there's also just 549 00:32:44,720 --> 00:32:46,620 Speaker 2: several different ways you can draw stuff. 550 00:32:46,720 --> 00:32:49,500 Speaker 2: So we talked a little bit about display text earlier for text, 551 00:32:49,980 --> 00:32:51,960 Speaker 2: and we've talked about bitmaps and tile grids and stuff. 552 00:32:52,220 --> 00:32:53,340 Speaker 2: Vector I.O. was mentioned. 553 00:32:53,540 --> 00:32:56,800 Speaker 2: So that's another one of the options if you're doing basic shapes and colors and stuff. 554 00:32:57,320 --> 00:33:01,140 Speaker 2: And then the Bitmap Tools Library is another one that I'll call out that's in the core 555 00:33:01,260 --> 00:33:05,240 Speaker 2: that can do lots of really interesting manipulations with bitmaps. 556 00:33:05,760 --> 00:33:09,980 Speaker 2: Sometimes you might be able to get away with using the Bitmap Tools library 557 00:33:11,340 --> 00:33:14,360 Speaker 2: instead of different sets of sprites or different assets or something. 558 00:33:14,520 --> 00:33:19,580 Speaker 2: like that. That would be my advice is to explore the different ways that there are out there to 559 00:33:19,780 --> 00:33:24,920 Speaker 2: display stuff. We have different ones are better suited for certain things than others. So you might 560 00:33:24,920 --> 00:33:29,680 Speaker 2: have better luck using a different technique for your particular game based on how you want it 561 00:33:29,760 --> 00:33:35,360 Speaker 2: to behave. And those bitmap tools you're talking about. That's like palette swapping and things 562 00:33:35,440 --> 00:33:41,420 Speaker 3: like that, right? It's not quite. No. So bitmap tools, the core module, there's a bunch of functions 563 00:33:41,440 --> 00:33:47,120 Speaker 2: in there, the ones that I use the most, it's like rotozoom is one. So you can take a chunk out of one 564 00:33:47,360 --> 00:33:53,620 Speaker 2: bitmap and paste it into another bitmap either rotated or scaled up or scaled down. And you can 565 00:33:54,010 --> 00:33:58,600 Speaker 2: even do partial scaling with that. So like groups, we mentioned before, groups in display I.O, 566 00:33:58,680 --> 00:34:03,380 Speaker 2: those can be scaled, but only by a full factor, right? You can scale it by two or three or four. 567 00:34:04,160 --> 00:34:09,260 Speaker 2: With bitmapTools.RotoZoom, you can do partial scales as well. So you could zoom something, scale it up 568 00:34:09,240 --> 00:34:12,240 Speaker 2: by one and a half or just by 10% or something like that. 569 00:34:12,820 --> 00:34:15,840 Speaker 2: So there's rotozoom, there's like draw shapes. 570 00:34:16,060 --> 00:34:18,120 Speaker 2: There's a circle one, a rectangle one. 571 00:34:18,580 --> 00:34:19,940 Speaker 2: I believe there's polygon one. 572 00:34:20,760 --> 00:34:23,320 Speaker 2: There are stuff for alpha blending. 573 00:34:23,580 --> 00:34:24,679 Speaker 2: There's stuff for dithering. 574 00:34:25,179 --> 00:34:26,520 Speaker 2: And it's all implemented in C. 575 00:34:26,740 --> 00:34:31,700 Speaker 2: So it's like it can go really fast to do a bunch of manipulation on a bitmap, 576 00:34:31,860 --> 00:34:34,960 Speaker 2: either a whole bitmap or a chunk out of a bitmap. 577 00:34:36,280 --> 00:34:37,540 Speaker 3: Yeah, it'd be awesome to see some. 578 00:34:37,840 --> 00:34:38,800 Speaker 3: What was the SNES? 579 00:34:38,980 --> 00:34:39,820 Speaker 3: You see mode seven. 580 00:34:40,159 --> 00:34:41,540 Speaker 3: It'd be awesome to see something like that, 581 00:34:41,659 --> 00:34:43,659 Speaker 3: but that might be outside of the capabilities. 582 00:34:46,580 --> 00:34:50,800 Speaker 3: I mean, I'm sure we can go into a whole discussion on game design. 583 00:34:51,200 --> 00:34:52,399 Speaker 3: Because that's what it comes down to. 584 00:34:52,500 --> 00:34:52,679 Speaker 3: You know, 585 00:34:52,780 --> 00:34:56,620 Speaker 3: the CircuitPython and the Fruit Jam provides you the platform, 586 00:34:56,960 --> 00:34:59,560 Speaker 3: but game design is the same across the board, 587 00:34:59,760 --> 00:34:59,980 Speaker 3: you know, 588 00:35:00,100 --> 00:35:02,820 Speaker 3: how you come up with ideas and explore those ideas. 589 00:35:03,420 --> 00:35:06,280 Speaker 3: And, of course, the Fruit Jam is not limited just to games. 590 00:35:07,080 --> 00:35:08,940 Speaker 3: I'd say actually a majority of the application 591 00:35:09,760 --> 00:35:10,820 Speaker 3: are not game related. 592 00:35:11,030 --> 00:35:16,040 Speaker 3: You know, you have, well, Larzio, right, paint music thing, right? 593 00:35:16,680 --> 00:35:17,800 Speaker 3: That's a great application. 594 00:35:17,920 --> 00:35:20,180 Speaker 3: And that's game adjacent, I would say. 595 00:35:20,880 --> 00:35:25,260 Speaker 3: And there's a lot else on the board that, you know, you can make a calculator, you know, 596 00:35:25,500 --> 00:35:26,280 Speaker 3: or the speak and spell. 597 00:35:26,400 --> 00:35:27,540 Speaker 3: I know that was one you did, Tim. 598 00:35:28,360 --> 00:35:28,480 Speaker 3: Yep. 599 00:35:29,020 --> 00:35:30,560 Speaker 3: Speaking spell, IRC. 600 00:35:31,680 --> 00:35:33,020 Speaker 4: I learned by example. 601 00:35:33,590 --> 00:35:38,920 Speaker 4: So I would suggest looking at other CircuitPython projects on GitHub or GitHub or, 602 00:35:39,040 --> 00:35:47,340 Speaker 4: the LEAR, the Adafruit Learn system or the circuit playground group, that's a good resource for 603 00:35:47,580 --> 00:35:53,520 Speaker 4: people that are looking for something similar. John Park's CircuitPython PARSEC, he's had a 604 00:35:53,540 --> 00:35:58,480 Speaker 4: couple games in there. So yeah, there should be resources that I would look at. 605 00:35:59,260 --> 00:36:06,520 Speaker 3: You actually just reminded me, Dan, I did create a Pong game, super basic for the Fruit Jam, 606 00:36:06,980 --> 00:36:14,400 Speaker 3: with a included tutorial that goes through everything from the bootstrap to manipulating graphics and controls and USB input. 607 00:36:14,740 --> 00:36:19,740 Speaker 3: And that would be a great place to start too, especially if you're not familiar with CircuitPython and how that works. 608 00:36:20,640 --> 00:36:22,760 Speaker 3: Because it's about as basic as you can get. 609 00:36:23,720 --> 00:36:26,280 Speaker 1: Is that available as a learn guide or where can people find that? 610 00:36:26,860 --> 00:36:30,540 Speaker 3: So it is on GitHub and it has a GitHub pages thing. 611 00:36:30,660 --> 00:36:34,900 Speaker 3: So it's like a website kind of thing that you go through each section of the tutorial. 612 00:36:34,900 --> 00:36:40,360 Speaker 3: I think I kind of got inspired by Todd Bot's synth I.O. tutorials to do that one. 613 00:36:41,220 --> 00:36:44,580 Speaker 3: I'll make sure to share a link with you, Paul, in case you aren't familiar with that. 614 00:36:44,920 --> 00:36:47,440 Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll make sure that I added to the show notes. That'll be great. 615 00:36:48,340 --> 00:36:52,780 Speaker 1: Well, that's all excellent advice. I'd like to thank all of you for your time this evening. 616 00:36:53,400 --> 00:36:55,580 Speaker 1: Dan, Tim, and Cooper. Thanks so much for coming on the show. 617 00:36:56,080 --> 00:36:56,840 Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for having me, Paul. 618 00:36:57,260 --> 00:36:57,960 Speaker 1: Thank you for having us. 619 00:36:58,640 --> 00:37:00,060 Speaker 1: It has been a pleasure, as always. 620 00:37:01,080 --> 00:37:02,960 Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to The CircuitPython Show. 621 00:37:03,600 --> 00:37:05,720 Speaker 1: Thank you to Cooper, Dan, and Tim for joining the show 622 00:37:05,960 --> 00:37:08,460 Speaker 1: and sharing their experiences developing for the Fruit Jam. 623 00:37:09,040 --> 00:37:11,380 Speaker 1: To learn more about the Fruit Jam apps the panel has discussed, 624 00:37:11,660 --> 00:37:15,500 Speaker 5: visit the show notes and transcript at www.com. 625 00:37:16,360 --> 00:37:18,120 Speaker 5: Until next time, stay positive.