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Welcome to the latest Python on Microcontrollers newsletter. Where has September gone! We’re sliding into October, spooky season, then November is the warm-up to December holidays and New Years. Coming back to my senses, October is also Open Hardware Month! Submit your open design for a spooky treat. Raspberry Pi has released yet more gear, even something new under the radar. All of this and much more to keep you informed in the Python on Hardware space. – Anne Barela, Editor
We’re on Discord, Twitter/X, BlueSky and for past newsletters – view them all here. If you’re reading this on the web, please subscribe here. Here’s the news this week:
October is Open Hardware Month
The Open Source Hardware Association is celebrating Open Hardware Month all October. There will be events and if you certify your open hardware design in October you’ll get the official pumpkin spice sticker – OSHWA.
Ed: As of last week there are 3,146 registered open source hardware projects.
MicroPython v1.27 is Scheduled for Mid-November
The v1.27 release of MicroPython is tentatively scheduled for mid-November, according to Matt Trentini. In the new release, there are 56 boards in the merge queue. Prerelase builds are on their website under each supported board – X.
New From Raspberry Pi This Week
The Raspberry Pi 500+
Raspberry Pi has released an upgrade to their all-in-one computer to include a mechanical keyboard with RGB LEDs and (finally) SSD support. Raspberry Pi 500+ is built on the Raspberry Pi 5 platform, featuring a 2.4GHz quad-core Arm Cortex-A76 CPU, dual 4k display output, dual-band WiFi and much more – Raspberry Pi News, review – bret.dk, teardown – sozorablog, and meet the engineers – Raspberry Pi News.
Plug a full size GPU into the Pi 500+ and use it with a 15-line patch – Jeff Geerling.
Raspberry Pi CM0 Castellated Module
Raspberry Pi CM0 is a yet-to-be-officially-announced castellated Compute Module based on the Raspberry Pi RP3A0 SiP (System-in-Package) found in the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W and Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3E (CM3E). Since most Raspberry Pi products are announced under a strict embargo, it’s surprising when new Raspberry Pi hardware appears that was never formally introduced – CNX Software and Pi Forums.
M.2 HAT+ Compact
The new M.2 HAT+ Compact for Raspberry Pi 5 allows squeezeing a 2230-format (30mm long) M.2 PCI Express card inside an official case, nestled neatly between the fan and the USB connectors – Raspberry Pi News.
The Harsh Truth about FPGAs
A close look at a budget friendly FPGA board. FPGAs are super fast and can do pretty much anything when it comes to digital electronics. So they should be way better than microcontrollers, yes? GreatScott! shows you how easy you can use them and why you would often times avoid them – YouTube.
BeagleBone Green Eco Receives Refresh with Gigabit Ethernet and 16GB eMMC
The Seeed Studio BeagleBone Green Eco, built around the Texas Instruments AM3358 processor, now has an ARM Cortex-A8 running at 1 GHz with a NEON SIMD coprocessor and dual-core PRU-ICSS for deterministic, real-time control. It integrates 512 MB of DDR3L RAM and expands onboard storage to 16 GB eMMC, a fourfold increase compared to the earlier BeagleBone Green – LinuxGizmos.
PyOhio Talks Now Available
The talks from the recent PyOhio conference are now available on YouTube – YouTube.
Real-Time BLE Air Quality Monitoring with BleuIO, Python and Adafruit IO
This article shows how to turn a BleuIO USB dongle into a tiny gateway that streams live air-quality data from a HibouAir sensor into Adafruit IO. The script listens for Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) advertising packets, decodes CO2, temperature, and humidity, and posts fresh readings via Python to Adafruit IO feeds every few seconds. The result is a clean, shareable dashboard that updates in real time – BleuIO.
This Week’s Python Streams
Python on Hardware is all about building a cooperative ecosphere which allows contributions to be valued and to grow knowledge. Below are the streams within the last week focusing on the community.
CircuitPython Deep Dive Stream
Last Friday, Tim was working on SPI Register.
You can see the latest video and past videos on the Adafruit YouTube channel under the Deep Dive playlist – YouTube.
CircuitPython Parsec
John Park’s CircuitPython Parsec this week is on Spyce Invaders Enemy Destruction – Adafruit Blog and YouTube.
Catch all the episodes in the YouTube playlist.
CircuitPython Weekly Meeting
CircuitPython Weekly Meeting for September 22, 2025 (notes) on YouTube.
Project of the Week: Pong For the Adafruit Fruit Jam Using CircuitPython Tutorial
Cooper Dalrymple is creating a Pong game for the Fruit Jam using CircuitPython. In the process, Cooper is writing a how-to on each part to help folks understand how to write games for the platform. It’s a work in progress but quite helpful – GitHub and Tutorial in progress. Via X.
Popular Last Week
What was the most popular, most clicked link, in last week’s newsletter? 5 projects you can do for much cheaper with an ESP32 than a Raspberry Pi.
Did you know you can read past issues of this newsletter in the Adafruit Daily Archive? Check it out.
New Notes from Adafruit Playground
Adafruit Playground is a new place for the community to post their projects and other making tips/tricks/techniques. Ad-free, it’s an easy way to publish your work in a safe space for free.
The Herman Entertainment System is a handheld gaming system with a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W and the Adafruit 1.3″ TFT Bonnet. We created a small setup that uses Python and creates a home screen that lists all the games on the device and you simply choose which to play – Adafruit Playground.
Fruit Jam Remote Control & the Power of the Community – Adafruit Playground.
Pill case light to show each day – Adafruit Playground.
News From Around the Web
4 reasons an ESP32 display beats an old tablet for a smart home dashboard – XDA.
Fruit_Jam_Application is a template for a CircuitPython application for the Adafruit Fruit Jam which is compatible with Fruit Jam OS – GitHub.
Does AI mean the end for the top programming languages? – IEEE Spectrum and i-programmer.info.
Making a Raspberry Pi photobooth with Raspberry Pi and Python – Instructables and GitHub.
Particle Tachyon review – a Qualcomm QCM6490 Edge AI and 5G cellular SBC tested with Ubuntu – CNX Software.
PyPI urges users to reset credentials after new phishing attacks – Bleeping Computer.
How global talent trends are changing the way companies use Python – BBN Times.
Stewart Russell forked this excellent multi-precision math library to give it explicit support for CircuitPython- GitHub. Via Mastodon.
Dive into PicoCalc’s WiFi scanning with MicroPython – YouTube.
I replaced all my bash scripts with Python, and here’s what happened – XDA.
A new LGL 10-digit serial VFD MicroPython UART driver for the Raspberry Pi Pico – GitHub.
Arduino cloud adds Bluetooth based provisioning, starting with UNO R4 WiFi – CNX Software.
6 abandoned gadgets that proved useful to my Raspberry Pi – XDA.
New
Nordic nRF54LM20A wireless MCU doubles the SRAM to 512 KB, and increases flash capacity. The SoC integrates a 128 MHz Arm Cortex-M33 core with a RISC-V coprocessor, 2 MB NVM, and 512 KB RAM, alongside up to 66 GPIOs, high-speed USB, and Nordic’s fourth-generation ultra-low-power 2.4 GHz radio supporting Bluetooth LE, Thread, Zigbee, Channel Sounding, and Matter. It offers twice the processing power, three times the efficiency, and up to 50% lower power consumption than the nRF52 Series – CNX Software.
The Olimex ESP32-C5-EVB is an evaluation board built around Espressif’s ESP32-C5-WROOM-N8R4 module with dual-band (2.4/5.0GHz) WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.0 LE, and 802.15.4 (Zigbee/Thread/Matter) wireless connectivity, 8MB flash, and 4MB PSRAM. – CNX Software.
New Boards Supported by CircuitPython
The number of supported microcontrollers and Single Board Computers (SBC) grows every week. This section outlines which boards have been included in CircuitPython or added to CircuitPython.org.
There were no new boards added this week.
Note: For non-Adafruit boards, please use the support forums of the board manufacturer for assistance, as Adafruit does not have the hardware to assist in troubleshooting.
Looking to add a new board to CircuitPython? It’s highly encouraged! Adafruit has four guides to help you do so:
New Learn Guides
The Adafruit Learning System has over 3,200 free guides for learning skills and building projects including using Python.
Using the OPEN INSTALLER Button on circuitpython.org from Dan Halbert
Fruit Jam Chyron from John Park
CircuitPython Libraries
The CircuitPython library numbers are continually increasing, while existing ones continue to be updated. Here we provide library numbers and updates!
To get the latest Adafruit libraries, download the Adafruit CircuitPython Library Bundle. To get the latest community contributed libraries, download the CircuitPython Community Bundle.
If you’d like to contribute to the CircuitPython project on the Python side of things, the libraries are a great place to start. Check out the CircuitPython.org Contributing page. If you’re interested in reviewing, check out Open Pull Requests. If you’d like to contribute code or documentation, check out Open Issues. We have a guide on contributing to CircuitPython with Git and GitHub, and you can find us in the #help-with-circuitpython and #circuitpython-dev channels on the Adafruit Discord.
You can check out this list of all the Adafruit CircuitPython libraries and drivers available.
The current number of CircuitPython libraries is 545!
New Libraries
Here are this week’s new CircuitPython libraries:
Updated Libraries
Here are this week’s updated CircuitPython libraries:
What’s the CircuitPython team up to this week?
What is the team up to this week? Let’s check in:
Dan
We’re even closer to a CircuitPython 10.0.0 release candidate. I fixed a cause of spurious auto-reloads when an SD card is presented as USB mass storage. I also turned off presenting SD cards on the atmel-samd port, because there is some underlying bug that causes USB disconnections. We will work on that bug after 10.0.0.
At this writing, I am fixing an issue with filesystem write-locking that is mistakenly allowing both a USB host computer and CircuitPython to write on an SD card at the same time.
Tim
This week the RPi sensor data LLM project guide went live. I also worked on the CircuitPython driver for the SPA06-003. I was having trouble for a while getting the wrong values from the sensor for temperature and pressure. After comparing the Arduino driver bus traffic with the CircuitPython traffic, I realized the difference was not correctly setting the bit shift functionality in the chip, which is required for large oversampling rates. After the I got the driver working and published, I finished up the remaining guide pages for this breakout.
Scott
This week I chatted with Dan about getting 10.0.0 released as stable. We’re super close! I fixed an issue with using PSRAM buffers for USB host. Otherwise, I’m slowly working my way through an ESP IDF update that will likely be released as 10.1.0.
Liz
This week I worked on documenting the new E-Ink Bonnet. This Bonnet plugs into your Raspberry Pi and lets you connect bare E-Ink displays to it. This board will make using the larger bare displays with Raspberry Pi a lot easier and open up a lot of projects.
Upcoming Events
The next MicroPython Meetup in Melbourne will likely be on October 22th – Meetup. You can see recordings of previous meetings on YouTube.
The Hackaday Superconference is back! Join this global conference of hardware hackers, makers, and tech enthusiasts this Oct 31st – Nov 2nd in Pasadena, California – Eventbrite.
The final KiCad conference (KiCon) will be 15 November, 2025 in Shenzhen, China – KiCad.
PyLadiesCon returns December 5–7, 2025. 100% online conference designed for our global community. Talks, workshops, panels, and community fun – PyLadies.
Send Your Events In
If you know of virtual events or upcoming events, please let us know via email to cpnews(at)adafruit(dot)com.
Latest Releases
CircuitPython’s stable release is 9.2.9 and its unstable release is 10.0.0-beta.3. New to CircuitPython? Start with our Welcome to CircuitPython Guide.
20250926 is the latest Adafruit CircuitPython library bundle.
20250919 is the latest CircuitPython Community library bundle.
v1.26.1 is the latest MicroPython release. Documentation for it is here.
3.13.7 is the latest Python release. The latest pre-release version is 3.14.0rc3.
4,342 Stars Like CircuitPython? Star it on GitHub!
Call for Help – Translating CircuitPython is now easier than ever
One important feature of CircuitPython is translated control and error messages. With the help of fellow open source project Weblate, we’re making it even easier to add or improve translations.
Sign in with an existing account such as GitHub, Google or Facebook and start contributing through a simple web interface. No forks or pull requests needed! As always, if you run into trouble join us on Discord, we’re here to help.
39,029 Thanks
The Adafruit Discord community, where we do all our CircuitPython development in the open, reached over 39,029 humans – thank you! Adafruit believes Discord offers a unique way for Python on hardware folks to connect. Join today at https://adafru.it/discord.
ICYMI – In case you missed it
Python on hardware is the Adafruit Python video-newsletter-podcast! The news comes from the Python community, Discord, Adafruit communities and more and is broadcast on ASK an ENGINEER Wednesdays. The complete Python on Hardware weekly videocast playlist is here. The video podcast is on iTunes, YouTube, Instagram), and XML.
The weekly community chat on Adafruit Discord server CircuitPython channel – Audio / Podcast edition – Audio from the Discord chat space for CircuitPython, meetings are usually Mondays at 2pm ET, this is the audio version on iTunes, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and XML feed.
Contribute
The CircuitPython Weekly Newsletter is a CircuitPython community-run newsletter emailed every Monday. The complete archives are here. It highlights the latest CircuitPython related news from around the web including Python and MicroPython developments. To contribute, edit next week’s draft on GitHub and submit a pull request with the changes. You may also tag your information on Twitter with #CircuitPython.
Join the Adafruit Discord or post to the forum if you have questions.
