Carlos
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carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos
@carlosperate.bsky.social
4.5K followers 900 following 110 posts
⚡️ Love everything embedded software/hardware. 🧑‍🏫 Passionate about STEM & EdTech. 👨‍💻 Embedded Software @ #Microbit Educational Foundation (microbit.org). 🐍 Oxford Python user group co-organiser. 🤔 Views my own.
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carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos @carlosperate.bsky.social · Nov 29
Researchers have found a way to turn off a webcam LED while in use.
This is why it was so important during the #microbit design to ensure the mic🎙 LED was wired to its power instead of GPIO. It’s crucial to teach the next gen about privacy & security (or their absence) in the tech they use every day
A picture of the micro:bit microphone LED light up, indicating the microphone is operating. A screenshot of the micro:bit schematics, showing the microphone circuit. It shows the microphone LED will always light up if the microphone is turned on.
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carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos @carlosperate.bsky.social · 19d
That's awesome, and what a great way to end the term!
Hopefully the hex tool will be useful for next time 😉
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carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos @carlosperate.bsky.social · 19d
That's awesome, hope the lesson goes great!

Btw, have you tried the micro:bit hex download tool? Makes flashing multiple micro:bits a bit easier:
microbit.org/tools/webusb...
micro:bit hex download tool
microbit.org
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Reposted by Carlos
microbit.org
Micro:bit Educational Foundation @microbit.org · 28d
📣 We’re hiring!
Join the Micro:bit Educational Foundation as an Embedded Software Engineer and help create open, inclusive tech that inspires young people to learn and code 💡

🔗 Apply or share: apply.workable.com/micro-bit-ed...
#Hiring #Edtech #SoftwareEngineer
Graphic with the micro:bit logo and bold text inside a speech bubble that says: “We are hiring!” The background features micro:bit brand colours — blue, green, and purple.
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carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos @carlosperate.bsky.social · Sep 2
Last time I used it was for a hobby project & at the time iOS didn't support it. But after that I remember seeing something about support added when the user installs it as a WPA?
That being said, they've messed around with WPA so much (including that whole Europe thing) it's worth double checking.
carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos @carlosperate.bsky.social · Sep 2
You can probably do web Push API with service workers, that'd be awesome to get a push notification to your phone or PC via the browser when the machine is done!
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carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos @carlosperate.bsky.social · Jul 15
While-else gets a lot of flak, but I quite like it, just wished it was called `nobreak`!
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carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos @carlosperate.bsky.social · May 15
Okay, I never noticed that before, but absolutely love it! Great work @thonnyide.bsky.social !
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carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos @carlosperate.bsky.social · May 1
Ah, gotcha. Well, have fun with your can of worms! 🫣
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carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos @carlosperate.bsky.social · May 1
So the flash write disables all interrupts completely? In other chips you are unable to run code from flash, but if the ISR is in RAM that can still run, is that not possible at all in the RP2350?
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carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos @carlosperate.bsky.social · Apr 21
Ah, that's fair enough, hard to debug sometimes when it's not replicable in the environments used by the maintainers.
I might not have to look into this again in a while, but if I do I'll try to remember to give it a go.
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carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos @carlosperate.bsky.social · Apr 21
Glad to hear the community library does work, although it's a bit annoying that it has that macOS issue. Hopefully something that could be resolved at some point.
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carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos @carlosperate.bsky.social · Apr 20
That's awesome!

Is there a official Python lib these days? Last time I looked into it there was only a community maintained one.
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carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos @carlosperate.bsky.social · Apr 18
Absolutely! Even now getting an embedded toolchain and any other tools like Cmake, ninja, openOCD, etc is not that straightforward.
The Arduino IDE did a great job ensuring everything *just works* 👌
carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos @carlosperate.bsky.social · Apr 15
Is it an add-on or a fork? 🤔

PJRC offers Teensyduino installers to replace some Arduino IDE files for Teensy boards compatibility.
And full IDE installers had to be provided for the latest macOS, so the lines get really blurry!

Either way, a great platform with a fantastic Arduino integration. 👏
A screenshot showing the Teensyduino installer. Image from https://www.pjrc.com/teensyduino-1-57-released/
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carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos @carlosperate.bsky.social · Apr 13
Forgot the most infamous fork of them all!

When Arduino SRL (the reason Arduino LLC created the Genuino trademark) forked IDE v1.6.3, removed the warning about the LLC boards & released it as v1.7.0 😱

So glad everything was eventually resolved & the two orgs merged 😌

hackaday.com/2015/04/06/a...
Arduino IDE Forked
As if it weren’t confusing enough in the Arduino world these days, now we’re going to have to deal with conflicting version numbers for the IDE. Yup, it’s been forked. Arduino LLC…
hackaday.com
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carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos @carlosperate.bsky.social · Apr 13
Yeah, that sounds quite annoying 😖. Were you building the full IDE from source as well?
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carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos @carlosperate.bsky.social · Apr 11
Ah, I had forgotten MPIDE!

It was released with the chipKIT Uno32 & Max32 boards from Digilent & @microchip-makes.bsky.social, featuring the PIC32.

I remember fondly these red boards, as they were the first 32 bit MCUs I ever used.

chipkit.net/about-us
A screenshot of the MPIDE, a dark red fork of the Arduino IDE to add support for the PIC32 chipKIT boards.
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carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos @carlosperate.bsky.social · Apr 11
Wow yeah, you are right, things get quite blurry!

Didn't realised you had to pack the entire IDE for the latest macOS releases, that must have been a pain to set up. Do you build it from source or patch it and re-sign it?

It's almost like "a fork with extra steps" 😅
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carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos @carlosperate.bsky.social · Apr 10
💯
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carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos @carlosperate.bsky.social · Apr 10
No worries!
I remember using Processing for the first time a while ago when I was at uni. Although I wasn't a huge fan of Java at the time, it made it really easy to draw stuff and I was pleaseantly surprised. It is a fantastic project!
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carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos @carlosperate.bsky.social · Apr 10
The other one I know is "IDE for GR", made for the "Gadget Renesas Boards". The coolest part is that the boards and the IDE are bright pink! 💖
www.renesas.com/en/products/...

👀 But has anybody seen any other forks? I'd love to find more!
A screenshot of the Renesas Arduino IDE, in bright pink. The language in the IDE menus is in Japanese, as Renesas is a Japanese company.
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carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos @carlosperate.bsky.social · Apr 10
I've only seen two notable Arduino IDE forks, both from silicon vendors.

The first is Energia from Texas Instruments. Some people might remember this one from to the first LaunchPad. An MSP430 dev board for $4.30, one the most affordable boards at the time 💸👍

energia.nu
The official screenshot of the Energia IDE, a "red" version of the Arduino IDE.
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carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos @carlosperate.bsky.social · Apr 10
The Arduino IDE was forked from Wiring, which in turn was forked from Processing, a visual coding environment designed to teach coding (Java in this case) through art. 🎨💻

More info 👉 hackaday.com/2016/03/04/w...
Screenshot showing three IDE windows side by side: Processing, Wiring, and Arduino
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carlosperate.bsky.social
Carlos @carlosperate.bsky.social · Apr 10
The original Arduino IDE was a game changer for makers, educators, and hobbyists. But did you know it was a fork of a fork?🍴
Not only that, but other companies later forked it as well to tweak it for their own needs! Have you seen or used these other versions? 👇🧵
A screenshot of the legacy Arduino IDE with a blinky example project.
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Reposted by Carlos
blogmywiki.bsky.social
blogmywiki @blogmywiki.bsky.social · Apr 1
Made a thing that makes me happy (how sad): an old RaspberryPi with a small screen and a serial console used as a terminal for smolBASIC (My First Text-based Language) that is running ON THE micro:bit! SmolBASIC is itself written in Python and can be extended by older children.
A BBC micro:bit showing a ghost icon. A USB keyboard. A small LCD display showing a program being entered, run on the micro:bit and listed. The program is: duck star ghost happy
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