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[Music]

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Welcome to the Circuit Python Show. I'm your host Tod Kurt, taking over hosting

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duties from the show's actual host Paul Cutler so that he can be a guest. Paul has

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been using computers since a young age but did learn to code until he was in

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his 40s. Paul has been contributing to open source projects for almost 20 years

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including the Gnome Project and the Discogs Python Client. When he's not in

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front of his computer you can find him listening to records from his vinyl

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record collection. Paul, welcome to the show. It's great to be here, thanks for

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guest hosting. Hey, my pleasure. I love the Circuit Python Show. So I guess we

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should get to start with your background. How did you first get started with

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computers and electronics? You know, I've been pretty privileged that I've been

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around computers almost my entire life. I was probably nine or ten when we had our

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first computer which was a Timex Sinclair TS-1000, which was really a modified Sinclair

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ZX81 is what the rest of the world knew it as. And then we got a second one,

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we got the TS-1500 which was a ZX Spectrum just a year or two later and I

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played around with those for a couple years. You know, I remember getting those

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magazines that were made out of newspaper and entering assembly code

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trying to program them. You make one little mistake and you just want to tear

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your hair out. But after a couple years we got an Apple IIc and I played around

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with that and we got a 300 baud modem which was screaming fast at the time and

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I got really into the bulletin board system scene. I loved BBS's and later we

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had a 1200 baud modem and I would actually go to in real life meetups with

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the different folks I met in the BBS as a teenager and from there it's just a

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lifelong love of computers. That's great. So when was the time you started

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getting into open source? Was it during the Apple II days or was it later?

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Oh it was much later. I was a full-blown adult and it's the fault of the

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game EverQuest of all things. So EverQuest came out in '99 and you could

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cheat at EverQuest if you had a Linux computer. And I just happened to have a

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second computer. I had been playing around with BOS actually a little bit

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and then I had actually purchased Red Hat Linux from a retail store six months

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earlier but it just sat in my closet until we started playing EQ with all my

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friends and I realized I could take that second computer put Linux on it and

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cheat at the game which was great. I know. That's cool. So I started using Linux and

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I had the second computer next to my gaming computer and the more I used it

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the more I liked it and I really loved the ethos that anyone could contribute

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to it and after probably four or five years of using Linux this would probably

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be around 2004-2005 I had done all the different distro hopping that people had

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done. I had tried Ubuntu and I had tried Fedora and by the mid to late 2000s I

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found a very small Linux distribution called Foresight and which isn't around

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anymore but one of the things that they really tried to do was be really close

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to upstream GNOME. So I started contributing to Foresight which led me

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to contributing to GNOME and I got really into that. I joined the marketing

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team and the sysadmin team even though I didn't really have a lot of sysadmin

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skills but I had project management skills which are always needed in open

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source projects. Yes, very much. And then I started writing a ton of documentation.

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I served one term on the board of directors and yeah and it's been you

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know 10 or 15 years since I probably left that scene but I just I loved it so

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much. I've made lifelong friends in that community. I was gonna ask you if

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you were a gnome or a KDE guy but I guess that answers that question. Oh yeah

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I'm a gnome guy there's no doubt about that. And one of the things that I'm probably most proud of is I

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was one of the first mentors for the GNOME outreach program for women that

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was started in 2010. So I mentored a couple of women for documentation and

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that program is still around. It's known today as the Outreachy program. Outreachy

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is still around and offers paid internships for those subject to

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systemic bias and under representation in tech and it promotes diversity in

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open source. So it's kind of cool that it's still around after all these years.

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That's great. Yeah the whole very underlooked aspect of open source I

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think is the management and documentation of the projects. It's like

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everyone's like oh we just just write the good code put it up on a repo and

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like you're done. It's like no no no that's just the start you know.

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Especially for really complex projects like a distro or a big like GUI

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application there's like so many different levels of like you know the

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code, the OS integration, the artwork you know it's just a huge

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huge task. You're absolutely right and I didn't know how to code at all when I

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was contributing so I'm a you know an example that you don't have to know how

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to code to be able to give back to an open source project. Right so but at some

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point you got into Python after after playing around with all this open source

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stuff. I did. How did that happen? I had an itch. I really wanted to learn

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programming. My wife is a developer and I had an itch to do it. I had time on my

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hands and it was something that I've always wanted to do but never had the

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discipline to do it so I went out and I bought a couple of Python books and

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realized very quickly that I don't learn from books. I learned from video courses

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and from hands-on projects is what I learned through the process so I took a

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course on Coursera with Dr. Chuck which taught me the basics of Python. What's a

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string? What's an int? You know how to manipulate strings and all that kind of

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fun stuff and then right when I was getting into it Michael Kennedy who

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hosts the Talk Python to Me podcast started Talk Python training and he had

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a Kickstarter of learn Python by creating 10 apps so it was very project

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based and was perfect so I bought that Kickstarter and then I kept buying

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classes from Talk Python to Me. The way he teaches really clicked for me and it

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taught me not just Python but I learned web frameworks like Pyramid and a couple

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years later I learned the fast API web framework as well so I'm a big fan of

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the Talk Python to Me classes and strongly recommend them for people that

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are looking to get into Python. Oh that's cool we should put that in the show

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notes I think then yeah? Absolutely I'll link to that. Right on right on and so and then how

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long did it take you to find Circuit Python like when when sort of in the

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history of Circuit Python did you come in and start playing with that? So I

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started Python in about 2017 and I got into Circuit Python because I was into

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Python I attended PyCon virtually in 2020 during the pandemic so it was the

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first PyCon I ever ever attended which was pretty cool and Microsoft had a

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booth a virtual booth at PyCon and if you did an exercise on these exercises

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built into github and if you learned and did the exercise you got a $50 Adafruit

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gift card and then they had a bonus exercise and I walked away with $100 in

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Adafruit gift cards. I did what probably everyone does when you're first

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starting out with Adafruit products I bought a Circuit Playground Express and

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it probably sat in my in my drawer for a good six months before I got it back out

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but it was during the pandemic and there was all we had was time on our hands and

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then I started playing around with that and quickly fell in love with Circuit

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Python it took two things that I love you know the the coding aspect of it but

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combined with that physical world aspect of it here's a device that you can touch

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and feel and I just thought that was the coolest thing ever. Yeah I've been

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I've been I've bounced off of Python like normal desktop Python many times

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over the last like 20 years or whatever always you know learned enough to do a

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project and then kind of it you know I finished the project and then it leaves

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my brain and I've been really happy with Circuit Python as a way to just learn

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Python like I don't know any of the web frameworks yet like you're talking about

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like Fast fast fast API fast API yeah like um you know I don't know anything I

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don't know you that you need the real Python frameworks but I think I'm pretty

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cognizant of how Python thinks in a way that I could actually learn those now

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as I definitely could not before. Yeah fast API was a fun one to learn because

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it's it was one of the fastest growing Python applications out there and it's

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async which is great for a web web server and learning that taught me a lot

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about you know how to program asynchronously as well as using the

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latest and greatest that things that are out there. And you've got some project

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now that you've created that that marries both desktop Python and fast API

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and Circuit Python right? I do it's it's probably the the project I'm most proud

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of I have a website called silversaucer.com that you can visit it was

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inspired by a Neil Gaiman poem of all things and it combines my love of vinyl

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records Python and Circuit Python so I learned how to use the Discogs API and

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Discogs is a website that's been around for about 25 years and they crowdsource

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all the different records and cassettes and CDs that are out there so for example

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Pearl Jam's debut album 10 has almost 300 different versions worldwide each

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country had their own CD and people have entered all this data into there to

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catalog each specific release. So I have a fairly large vinyl record collection as

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listeners know and I wanted to learn how to interact with an API and I wanted to

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learn how to use fast API so I built a site and it only does three things

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there's three buttons on the front one is a random button it'll randomly choose

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an album for me to go play it's just an inspiration for me. So anyone on the

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internet can say hey Paul go just randomly go pick an album. Well it'll pick

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an album for them but it doesn't tell me anything. Oh I see okay. Now if I'm logged

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in there's some different functionality when it comes to the Circuit Python stuff

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but I'll get to that in a minute. Right right right. And then there's a play

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button and if you in that shows you a list of every record I have and you can

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select a record and then I'll show you the album art and the song list

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underneath it once it loads and then there's an another feature that I built

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called On This Day that I scraped both discogs and music brains with my

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collection to figure out which day in a certain album was ever released. Oh cool.

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So which is another way that I get inspired to go listen to an album it's

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like oh you know it's for example and this is kind of a funny one yesterday or

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today Debbie Gibson's Electric Youth came out in 1989 which is a record that

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I happen to own I love 80s pop music so you know don't laugh at me too hard but

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it's a great way to just go pick a record off the shelf and say hey I'm

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gonna listen to this now. So once I started getting into Circuit Python I

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realized that I could take it a step further. Now my record player is in

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another room it's on the opposite side of the wall of my home office down here

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in my basement so it's only about 10 feet away but the record sleeve is in

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there so I can't see the album art. So I have a pie portal and I decided using

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the discogs API it shows me that the album art the download to JPEG that's

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displayed on the website while using the pillow library I took that album art and

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reformatted it to a pie portal size which I think is about 300 pixels or

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320 pixels and when that web page loads if I'm the user who's logged in it will

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then send a message using MQTT over Adafruit IO and the pie portal is

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listening for that MQTT message and once that page loads and sends the message

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the pie portal goes out to my web server downloads the album art and displays it

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so that's how I kind of married desktop Python with Circuit Python. So it's a little

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thing that sits on your desk and it just displays the album art and oh

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that's great as soon as you play to play an album that's cool yeah. Yep as soon as I

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choose that album to play on the website and then late last year I bought a 64 by

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64 RGB matrix and did the same thing again but now it looks like pixel art

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because this is a 64 by 64 image it's tiny by the time it shrinks it down

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but it was kind of cool and now I'm actually considering doing it for a

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third time and picking up one of those s3 qualia boards with one of the RGB dot

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clock displays that are a little bigger than a pie portal but I haven't

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spent the money on that yet. Yeah and the color the color rendition of those

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displays like they're both like higher density or higher resolution they're

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like up to 480 by 480 I think but also they're like I think they're six bit per

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channel color instead of the sort of mostly five bit per channel that the

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other displays use on my controllers are so it's like it's like man we get to

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drive these like real displays and Circuit Python it's kind of incredible

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exactly probably the next time I order something from Adafruit I'll pick one of

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those up and do the whole project all over again. Totally totally yeah there's

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no OS so it just starts up. Exactly. So we talked about like like quality is one of

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the new the new things that's going on in Circuit Python what are some other

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other things you're excited about that's coming up in in Circuit Python because

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it's it's kind of ever-evolving there's new things happening all the time what

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are some of the things that you've seen? You know the first two things that come

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to mind are the first is the Memento camera I have been waiting for that

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thing to come back in stock and I just think it's so cool not only is it an

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open-source hardware camera it's programmable and every time I think of a

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different way to program it it seems like there's already a learn guide to do

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it whether it's you know using a remote or stop-motion or creating GIFs and I

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just think that thing is is cool and I can't wait to get my hands on one. The

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second one that comes to mind is is USB host you know that combined with support

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with the new bigger RGB dot-clock displays makes me wonder and and Scott

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Shawcroft actually mentioned this in his Circuit Python 2024 blog post how close

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are we to a little mini Circuit Python powered computer right when you have a

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computer or a keyboard with the display it can't be that far away now I know

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that USB host only works on the IMX and the RP 2040 chipsets right now in those

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dot-clock displays work on the S3 so there's gonna have to be some work done

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probably to get to that point but it that's one of the things that I think

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I'm really excited for in the future yeah we're really close to something that

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is very much like the old Sinclair zx81 or the timex one you had where where

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it's just this little box and it and you just turned it on and you've got a full

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little language based computer you can type programs into without any like

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worrying about is it on the net is it is it running OS all this kind of stuff is

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just all it does is the language it does basic in the case of the zx81 or it does

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Circuit Python in the case of this hopeful new thing we could make in a

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year or so it's exactly yeah the the camera the the memento camera is pretty

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great because it takes a bunch of stuff that's been here and there like there's

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been a camera you can hook up to an ESP 32 for a while and there's been like you

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know SD card support for a while and all this other sort of stuff you know

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screens of course and now it's a whole thing it's like it's got the camera the

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screen a little microphone a little speaker SD card Wi-Fi and oh yeah and

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you can access all of this via Circuit Python and make it do things that a

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camera can do right and it just works yeah yeah so it'll be interesting it's

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it's um one of the one of the things that I think people need to realize

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about Circuit Python that has taken me a while is um it's sort of like Legos

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where you can you've if you've got the pieces available to you you can snick

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them together to form new things but if you don't have the right Lego piece you

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can't do stuff like and so like for a while like for the longest time there

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wasn't camera like the camera Lego piece and Circuit Python didn't exist but now

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it does and so I think it's pretty cool that we're getting more and more of

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these cool little Lego pieces that we can do stuff with oh I agree it is so

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cool to watch the development happen in real time so so we got all these new

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things that are that are definitely coming up what are some of the things

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you want to see Circuit Python do in the future you know one of the things I'd

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like to see is more options for Bluetooth so we've got that an RF boards

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that that are out there and with Circuit Python 9 they've updated the expressive

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IDF the IOT development framework and I know or I believe that there are still

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some changes upstream in the nimble library that need to happen before

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Circuit Python can take advantage of Bluetooth on an s3 chip but I think

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it'll be you know considering all the different places we're seeing these s3

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chips now right the qualia boards yeah the memento camera everything we just

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talked about adding Bluetooth it just seems to be the next step and that's one

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thing I would personally like to see yeah yeah definitely the these ESP 32 s3

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chips are so powerful with their like they've got dual core I think and

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they've got Wi-Fi and they've got Bluetooth but yeah getting the Bluetooth

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stuff has been not quite working on Circuit Python and I think there's even

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been a problems with it and when you're writing programs in C and stuff and so I

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can't wait for that because it's pretty cool to have your have a little Bluetooth

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gizmo that talks to your phone or whatever and so you can pull off you can

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get cool notifications from your phone you can like control your phone in

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various ways you know have it be a MIDI device or audio device or something

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right yeah this isn't the end of the show yet but I wanted to also thank you

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for the last what two years of doing the Circuit Python show I think it was a

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very critical tool to help get people to learn about Circuit Python and get

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people who are doing some of the Circuit Python stuff kind of get them out there

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into the world so thank you very much oh you're welcome it's been my pleasure

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that you know the developers and hackers and makers that I've gotten to talk to

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it's been so cool getting to know all these people and seeing all the cool

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projects that are done you know it's it's sad in a way that the show is

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coming to an end but I think it's time but yeah the last two years have just

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been wonderful and being able to meet everyone especially a good a good thing

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to let us do instead of worrying about the pandemic for the last couple years

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exactly and that's one of you know one of the reasons why I started it is I was

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looking for a hobby in addition to you know Circuit Python and Python and just

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coding and it was a great learning experience and how to cut up audio and

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audio production and all that kind of fun stuff I've learned a ton totally

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yeah these are your two standard questions you have at the end of end of

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the the podcast if anyone wants to learn more about you and your work where

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should they go they can visit my home page at Paul Cutler org I have a blog

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there that I infrequently update like most people these days but I also have a

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projects page that lists all the different projects I've worked on over

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the last couple years with screenshots and links to the github repos and all

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that kind of fun stuff that would be the place to go yeah I should do that that's

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a good idea and lastly so you're going to start a new Circuit Python project

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what board are you reaching for just to first start prototyping or building with

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I'm gonna go with the one that we've been talking about so much well as the

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same one that Jeff Epler picked in the last episode which is a QDPI s3 with two

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megs of PS RAM I don't typically need a lot of GP GP IO so the QDPI s are

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perfect for me with that small little footprint and like we were just talking

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about the s3 is such a powerful chip and I've really really enjoyed working with

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Wi-Fi a number of my projects use Wi-Fi whether it's downloading images or

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controlling my home theater receiver remotely I love built-in Wi-Fi on those

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chips yeah yeah I'm a big fan of the ESP 32 s3 chips also not even

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not even when using them for Wi-Fi like I've used a ton of them for non

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internet projects because their little processor in them is so fast they can do

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a lot of mathy type operations if you're doing like synthesizers or stuff so yeah

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big big fan of that chip as well Paul thanks so much for being on the show and

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hosting the other shows and creating the circuit Python show transcripts are

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available in most podcast players and show notes are available at www.circuit

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python show calm thanks for listening and stay positive

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(electronic beeping)