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Welcome to The Bootloader. I'm Paul Cutler.

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And I'm Tod Kurt. We have a special episode for you today with an interview with Justin

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Myers, the author of the CircuitPython Library Connection Manager. Before we get to that,

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though, Paul and I each have a couple of things to share with you, each not more than a few

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minutes long. What's your first one, Paul?

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My first one is how to level up at CircuitPython. Professor John Gallaugher of Boston College

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recently released two videos I wanted to share, one for how to migrate from using Mu and

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CircuitPython to using PyCharm with Teal and a video on using Circup to install and update

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CircuitPython libraries. If you're not familiar with Professor Gallaugher, I talked to him

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way back in episode 3 of the CircuitPython Show, which I'll link to in the show notes.

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He teaches a class called Introduction to Physical Computing, which uses CircuitPython

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along with microcontrollers to teach students computing concepts. He has other YouTube playlists

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worth checking out on his YouTube channel, especially if you're newer to CircuitPython.

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I'll link to those as well.

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But back to his new videos. The first one is how to correctly set up PyCharm on MacOS

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to use with CircuitPython. Most of this is applicable to Linux, too, and I learned a

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few new things. It's a longer video at about half an hour, but the professor walks you

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through how to correctly configure PyCharm, and he's using the free community edition

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in the video. Next, he covers using the new and updated CircuitPython setboard so you

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have code completion for your microcontroller in PyCharm. That might be brand new to a lot

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of people and is definitely worth watching. From there, he covers using Teal, an open

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source serial program that is way better than using Screen. It's got auto-reconnect as

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its killer feature, and I think it's pretty cool that he included Teal as the serial monitor

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in Mu is one of its key features.

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Next up is a 15-minute video on using CircUp to install CircuitPython libraries. If you've

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used CircuitPython, chances are you've downloaded the Adafruit library or the community library

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bundle, and then you have to find the right library out of hundreds. But what if you could

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easily use the command line? He walks you through how to use CircUp from the command

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line, and then for Mac OS users or for Linux users using the ZSH shell, he shows you how

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to add tab completion by updating your ZSH configuration file.

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CircUp has also been getting some love over the last few months. Shout out to Tim, aka

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Foamy Guy in the Adafruit community. He's been doing some refactoring and adding new

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features as well. I know I learned a few things, and if you use CircuitPython and you're looking

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to level up your CircuitPython workflow, I highly recommend checking out these videos

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from Professor Gallaugher.

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I love CircUp. It's sort of like, if you've never heard of it, it's sort of like Pip,

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the Python package manager, but for CircuitPython. And it hooks into the two big package repositories

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that exist for CircuitPython, the Adafruit one and the community one. It's so good, but

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it's a little bit hard to set up if you've never done any sort of Python setup before.

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So this video is like super handy because I get people asking me all the time, "How

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do you install a CircuitPython library?"

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Right.

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And I'm like, "The answer is just use CircUp." But then the question becomes, "Well, how

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do you install CircUp?"

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And I think it's really cool that he actually walks you through on how to update your ZSH

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shell for the tab autocompletes, because there's hundreds of libraries, and it makes it just

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that much easier to find the library you're looking for.

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I really want to follow his steps on how to set up that PyCharm IDE, because I don't really

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use IDEs in the normal sense. I just use a text editor with code syntax highlighting.

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But there's so many people that have been trying to use the VS Code CircuitPython extension,

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and it's been sort of perennially broken.

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The people are so frustrated using it. And it looks like PyCharm is really well done.

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And there's this nice now intro video on how to actually meld it with CircuitPython, which

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is a little weird because most of the times when you're editing Python with an IDE, you're

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editing the files sort of in a project, say.

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And CircuitPython is a little bit different in that the code lives on a device, and you

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edit the device.

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And so maybe your actual project is in a GitHub repo that lives on your computer somewhere.

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So how do you deal with those two separate views of your code?

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And I think PyCharm can help you with that.

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It can, but you're still writing directly to the microcontroller in the way that it's

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set up in this example.

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Because I know I use PyCharm, and I did learn a couple of things, but there's still a lot

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of copy-paste.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Because I commit everything to my GitHub repo, so I'm writing locally, saving it there, and

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then copying it over to the drive as soon as I hit save, running the code.

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Yeah, that's usually how I work as well.

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But I see all these people that try to use Mu, because it's easy to use, but Mu's getting

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kind of crusty.

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And Thonny, I don't know, Thonny just always seems like it breaks my CircuitPython install

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whenever I try to use it.

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Sure.

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Yeah, it's too bad that Mu's getting a little long in the tooth.

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It's an open source project, it needs a little love, but it's nice to see other alternatives

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out there that are well documented.

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Yeah, no doubt.

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Yeah, I mean, the cool thing is that because it's all just a text file, you can use anything

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that can edit text files to edit your CircuitPython code.

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But it'd be nice to have a really good IDE for those people who need IDEs.

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What's your first one?

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All right, so kind of related, Professor Gallaugher also does a lot of how to program iOS apps

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for Apple devices.

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And so those are written in Swift.

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Swift is a programming language that Apple has been developing for the last 10 years.

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They use it on all their platforms.

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It's the officially recommended way for writing apps for iPhones, iPads, Apple Watch, things

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like that.

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And Swift is a really interesting language.

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It's heavily influenced by Haskell and Rust, these sort of academic languages that emphasize

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type safety and functional programming, where the compiler itself can catch a lot of bugs

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as it compiles your code down, which is kind of foreign to how Python and JavaScript work,

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where you just kind of run your code and see if it crashes or not.

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And so there's this whole academic effort in computer science that we should be able

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to make provably correct programs, or programs that we can prove will not crash for certain

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classes of crashes.

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That's what Haskell and Rust kind of comes from.

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That's where Swift came from as well.

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And it's a really interesting language.

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It looks a little bit like C, but with all these sort of extra neat things on top of

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it.

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If you look at Chris Lattner, who developed LLVM and the Clang compiler, which you've

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probably seen in various places when you've installed things, it's been the sort of revolution

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how to compile C-based or C-like languages.

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And so you'll see, I think you'll see LLVM and Clang a lot more going forward.

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But Swift uses those two things underneath to do its magic as well.

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And the reason why I'm bringing all this up is because Apple just released something they

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call Embedded Swift, which is a version of Swift that runs on microcontrollers, which

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is amazing.

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This is a super high-level language, in many ways higher level than Python or JavaScript.

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And we can run it on a microcontroller on things that are even some ways smaller than

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what CircuitPython type controllers can do.

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And not only did they release here's Embedded Swift, but they also released working demos

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for the Raspberry Pi Pico, the ESP32C6, the InterF52-840, which is a Beely chip, and the

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STM32 chips.

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And they've also released a bunch of examples on how to participate in Matter, a Matter

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network, which is the new standard for home automation that Apple's HomeKit API does.

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And I think Google's Echo platform also does now.

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And so there's a, and it's all on GitHub, you can just go to their Swift Matter examples,

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see the smart light example that you can run and control.

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You can make a controllable smart light with Siri and about 60 lines of Swift code.

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And it's all, it has a lot of the same features of real Swift of the type safety, the functional

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programming, that kind of stuff.

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And it's just sort of amazing that we're getting this super high-level language running on

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tiny chips.

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And I've not looked at it too much yet, but in the show notes, there'll be some links

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to some other articles describing it and links to the GitHub that has some examples.

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So you can actually try some of this stuff out on your Pico or ESP32.

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I only know Python, and this has me really intrigued, especially the Matter integration,

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right?

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We don't have that in CircuitPython yet.

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I don't think Arduino has Matter integration that I've seen.

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So actually being able to write my own smart home apps on microcontrollers would be a really

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cool use case and actually has me thinking of learning a second language.

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Yeah, it's like, supposedly there's Matter APIs in the latest ESP IDF, the SDK that you

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use when you're writing C code for the ESP32 chips.

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And I think that's what these Swift Matter examples are using under the hood.

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But do you really want to be mucking around with C code when you could use a high-level

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language like Swift?

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Yeah.

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And so, you know, it'd be nice if we get Matter support in CircuitPython someday.

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There's no reason why we can't.

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And I think Jeffler might actually be working on that really, really early stages.

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Nice.

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Yeah, yeah.

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I would love to see that.

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All right, Paul, what's your number two?

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My number two is accessibility matters.

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When I first started contributing to open source about 20 years ago, one of the first

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projects I contributed to was the GNOME project, the Linux desktop environment.

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One of the core pieces of GNOME's culture is accessibility, which includes everything

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from the Orca screen reader to how we wrote documentation back then.

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You know, the worst disability that I have personally is being extremely colorblind,

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but that focus on accessibility has always stuck with me, which is why I'm excited to

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see a project like this.

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The first is the AccessBit from Dr. John Vidler in the UK.

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The Micro:bit Educational Foundation commissioned a report on accessibility, which included

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a speculative section on how to improve the Micro:bit platform for those with limited or

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different mobility.

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If you're not familiar with the Micro:bit, it's a microcontroller primarily made for

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education, popular in the UK and Australia, that features two buttons, a 5x5 LED grid,

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and connections for alligator clips.

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It can run MicroPython, CircuitPython, and MakeCode.

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The report included a few sketches and possible solutions for potential 3.5 millimeter audio

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jacks, which are the industry de facto standard for accessibility, like what are found on

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Microsoft's Xbox Adaptive Controller.

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Dr. Vidler decided to design a PCB as a minimum viable product to add five adaptive switches.

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He walks through various iterations of his design, landing on a final design that includes

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an edge connector to connect to the Micro:bit and room for five 3.5 millimeter jacks.

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It's pretty cool the thought that he put into the design, from how the add-on board connects

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using the 40 pin Micro:bit controller to the curved design of the board.

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He had JLCPCB make a handful of boards and sent them off, and they were shown at the

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Blockly Summit in Cambridge earlier in June.

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Check out the show notes to the link to his blog post detailing the process, including

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photos.

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The second product is a new Adafruit product, the TRRS Trinkey.

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Adafruit's Trinkey line includes a USB-A port to plug it into a host computer, and a small

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board maybe the size of a flash drive, so it's pretty small.

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The TRRS Trinkey has a SAMD21 chip, has one 3.5 millimeter jack, and can run CircuitPython

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or Arduino.

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I think it's great that those who might need it have more options for accessibility, especially

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using microcontrollers, which they can program to their needs.

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I'm excited to see what people can think up using tech like this, especially if it makes

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their lives easier.

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These are a great sort of combo, because the Adafruit TRRS Trinkey is purely just a USB device.

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It looks like a little USB thumb drive almost, it just has a 3.5 millimeter jack on the back.

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But the Micro:bit, it has Bluetooth.

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It has USB as well, but it has Bluetooth.

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And so you can now make a Bluetooth accessible controller with this little add-on board by

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just snicking the Micro:bit into it, and then plugging in some of these accessibility controllers

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into that, and then pairing it with your phone with a little bit of code, with make code

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or something.

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That's incredible.

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I think there'll be a lot of fun things being created with this.

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I agree.

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What's your next one?

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So my next one is about CAD query.

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So I've been on a journey to move to open source tools for my engineering work.

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I've mentioned before I've gone from using Eagle to KiCAD.

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I use Fusion 360 for my 3D CAD modeling, and it's pretty good, but I'm always irritated

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after using it for a lot of different reasons.

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What are the open source alternatives?

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If you're going for a gooey 3D experience, there's things like Blender, but I like parametric

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modeling.

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One of the nice things that Fusion 360 does is you can make everything parametric, where

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you just define a set of constraints, and then you create solid bodies from those constraints.

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Blender's not really that.

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Blender's more of like an artist's tool.

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It can do a little bit of it.

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So for the longest time, there's been this thing called OpenSCAD, which is a textual

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3D parametric modeler.

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And it's a gooey app where you've got two panes.

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One pane is the text of the OpenSCAD language you write to create cubes and pyramids and

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cones and ways to combine them in different ways to make your 3D object.

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And then on the right is a render of what that thing looks like.

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And so from that, you can, and people have done this to great effect, make enclosures

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and other 3D things that can be 3D printed.

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Like I think all of the Prusa components in the Prusa 3D printers are all actual SCAD

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models that somebody has designed as text files.

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And so if you need to make the screw holes a little bigger because you're building it

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by hand and you're 3D printing the pieces and you only have M5 screws instead of M3

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screws, you can maybe just go into the OpenSCAD file and change one little parameter and change

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all the screw hole sizes.

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But I've always bristled at OpenSCAD because it's got its own special language.

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And I've been looking at other things.

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And I just discovered recently this thing that's been around for a long time called

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CAD Query, which is like OpenSCAD, but it's all in Python.

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It uses standard Python syntax, and it is mostly a library that you can then express

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via various ways.

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You can just run a main.py and have that output a file, but you can also run this thing called

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CQ Editor, which is a GUI editor, kind of like the OpenSCAD editor where you have multiple

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windows and you can edit text in one and see a render in the other window.

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And I've been using that and it's kind of working.

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I don't know, even though I've been using CircuitPython for so many years, I'm still

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not a very good Python person.

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So this is like kind of diving into more Python.

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The reason why I discovered this is Luke Wren, who is one of the ASIC designers, sorry, at

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Raspberry Pi.

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He's one who has helped us do some of the clever PIO things that we've done with the

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Raspberry Pi RP2040 chip, like the cool SynthIO and PWM and touch sensors and stuff is all

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kind of because, oh, and most especially the HDMI output from a little $4 microcontroller

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is because of some of his hints that he's given us.

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But he has a GitHub repo of a bunch of CAD query files.

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So if you want to see how CAD query things look, what the Python looks like, you can

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just go to his repository and go, oh, look, there's a little vacuum adapter and here's

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an air duct plate or whatever.

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So there's a nice little library of things for you to kind of browse through and see

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what CAD query feels like from a language point of view.

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But one of the best things about CAD query is that unlike OpenSCAD and unlike the similar

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OpenJS CAD, which is the same thing as OpenSCAD in some ways, but with JavaScript, CAD query

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outputs step files, which are object files, not STLs, which are like tessellated, triangulated

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shapes.

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And I was really frustrated that like OpenSCAD doesn't have a step export feature because

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if you have a step file, you can now import that into another CAD program like Fusion

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360 and then do additional edits on it.

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Whereas it's really hard to do edits on meshes.

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The STL format is made for just output, for 3D printing.

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It's like the bitmap version of your vector file.

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And so having a step is really important to me.

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And so, yeah, so I'm going to be playing with CAD query over the next whatever months or

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so and see if I do anything with it.

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I share your excitement for that.

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As I mentioned earlier, Python is the only language I know.

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So looking through some of those examples, it's started to click for me.

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I've tried to use OpenSCAD and never could figure it out.

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I can't use FreeCAD because they don't have a colorblind mode and Fusion 360, I've never

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really gotten the hang of.

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I've had some luck with Onshape, but actually having the ability to actually program it

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is and with the examples that they've got, looks really cool.

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Thanks, Tod.

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And now we have a special guest, Justin Myers.

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Back in episode seven for the CircuitPython 9 release show we did, I mentioned Connection

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Manager, but kind of guessed how it worked.

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Well, I reached out to the author of the new library, Justin Myers, and asked him about

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it.

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Here's the interview.

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Justin, welcome to the show.

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Thanks, Paul.

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I'm excited to be here.

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To be honest, it's my first time I've been on a podcast, so I'm really excited about

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it.

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It's great that you're here.

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What is the new CircuitPython library Connection Manager and what was your inspiration in creating

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it?

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Yeah, so basically late 2023, I had decided to spend some of my, let's call it extra time

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working on CircuitPython and trying to see how I could help project.

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I love the open source community.

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And as I was kind of watching the threads, I just saw kind of user after user on Discord

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having different connection issues, running out of sockets, different things like that,

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memories issues and everything.

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And I was like, "Hmm, seems strange.

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Should be a better way."

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And so as I kind of started digging in, saw like each library kind of managed sockets

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differently and really think about and look at the differences between like a microcontroller

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and CPython running on a PC is like on CPython, you can open sockets all day long, nothing

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really happens.

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But then once you get to a microcontroller, it's different.

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And kind of once I started digging into that, I was like, "Oh, well, you've got the native

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Wi-Fi that does it one way.

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You've got like the ESP32 SPI that does it one way.

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You've got the WISNET 5K that does it a different way."

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And just kind of all this boilerplate and different ways to get the SSL connection and

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different things.

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And I was like, "This is weird.

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Like there should be an easier way to do this."

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And so it's kind of what started me going down this road of trying to find out like,

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"Is there a better way to do this?"

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And what was the better way?

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So basically kind of the flow went, I asked the comment on the CircuitPython dev channel

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and Discord.

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I said, "Hey, I've got this idea."

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Basically the requests library had this built-in session manager that kind of managed a bunch

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of the sockets.

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But oftentimes what users would do is they would just re-init that thing and lose all

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the sockets.

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And so they were still technically open, just sitting there.

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And so kind of that first pass was I basically kind of separated some of that out to a separate

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class and kind of shared that with the devs.

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And they were like, "Nope, let's create a new library.

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Like that's not a good way to do it."

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Kind of break up dependencies and everything like that.

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And kind of from that, there's literally days spent kind of back and forth on like, "What

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should we name this?"

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And so ConnectionManager was kind of where that was born and basically just started separating

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a bunch of the stuff out of what was in the request library and put it into this new one.

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And then building handlers that would take in whatever radio object you passed in and

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try to determine, "Oh, what's the right SSL method for this one?"

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Reducing imports from five or six all the way down to just the one or two that were

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needed.

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And that's really the key, isn't it?

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If you have a PicoW, it was doing it different than an ESP32 S3.

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And now for the user, that setup instantiation is almost the same across the different microcontrollers.

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Is that right?

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Yeah.

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And that was kind of the goal, right?

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Because if you think through how CircuitPython started and once connection happened, so the

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ESP32 Spy was one of the first ones, developers wrote that library and then they kind of mimicked

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it a little bit for the Wiznet 5K.

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And then when the new ones came out, like ESP32 S2 and S3 and things, and they started

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having this onboard wifi, they changed how they did it again.

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And with anything that's open source, they're running forward as fast as they can.

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And sometimes it's hard to go backwards to go update everything.

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There were depreciation flags and comments, not flags in the code.

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And all of these places were like, "Oh, we should get rid of this at some point," but

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it was still there like years or months later.

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And so a lot of it was like trying to trim some of that down.

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What was it like to partner with the core developers on Connection Manager?

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I really enjoyed it.

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It was really interesting.

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It's been a really interesting progress for me.

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So a lot of my development started in C, 20 plus years ago when I started doing dev.

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And a lot of it was for smaller systems.

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And it was at a time where you had to do memory management and really think of your code for

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what's going to be the fastest and most efficient ways.

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And last 20 years, I've switched over to things like Python and things where...

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And JavaScript and everything, where a lot of that stuff's just handled for you and you

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forget about it.

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And so it's actually been really fun because they'll make comments on PRs and they're like,

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"Oh yeah, that's a wasteful way to do something," because there's not a lot of space.

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So it's really small and trying to think through it.

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But they've been great.

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There's been times where a handful of them, we've jumped on calls together to work through

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some things and figure it out.

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They've been great on the comments and asking questions and whatnot.

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And so I think the CircuitPython devs, it's a great team to work with.

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00:22:09,920 --> 00:22:11,480
Well, that's great to hear.

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What's next for you and Connection Manager?

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Kind of where I've been going next, I've been opening a handful of PRs to make the radios

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again more similar.

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So for example, they all had different ways to find out what AP am I connected to?

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What's my Mac address?

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And different methods of returning everything.

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So I've been continuously working to try to get the different radios as close to the same

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as possible.

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And so really for an idea of...

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A typical user probably goes out and they buy a microcontroller that's got whatever

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Wi-Fi has on it, and they go run with that project and go.

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But oftentimes they see a lot of the questions are someone sees a learn guide and they're

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like, "Well, I don't have that stuff that's in the learn guide.

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I have this."

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But then they really struggle to try to figure out how to get it all to work because these

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different methods are different.

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So it's really been working to get all those core methods the same.

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So you can, for the most part, copy paste other than initializing the radio itself.

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And the work I'm doing currently now is I'm actually building out some network test code

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that we can run.

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And so every time a new version of requests comes out or 9.1 for CircuitPython or 9.2

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or 10 or whatnot, we can actually run the same test code across the same different microcontrollers

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and actually figure out like, "Oh, is SSL still working?

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Can I still connect to MQTT?

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Can I run a server?

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Can I do requests?"

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And ideally with a goal of having a kind of similar to CSS is that this like, "Can I use?"

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Like so you could go look and be like, "I have this microcontroller.

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I'm using this radio and I want to do this.

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Can I do that?"

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Well, that's great.

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It's been fun and exciting to watch you partner with the core devs as you've built this over

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the last few months.

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Thank you so much for being on the show.

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Thank you very much.

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I really appreciate it.

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And that's our show.

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A special thanks to Justin Myers.

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If you enjoy listening to the show, tell a friend or write a review.

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It really does help.

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For detailed show notes and transcripts, visit thebootloader.net.

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Until next time, stay positive.

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[Music]