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Welcome to the latest Python on Microcontrollers newsletter! I needed this past weekend to get over all that was happening on CircuitPython Day last Friday. If you missed the talks live, they are all on a YouTube playlist. There was a new version of CircuitPython released with lots of great additions. And Phil Torrone has taken bunnie’s new Bao chip to new heights with a fresh CircuitPython port, to include music and graphics. The memory shortages have hit Pine64. They are ceasing their Linux hardware until pricing improves. And there is a thorough article on the RISC-V architecture, from small microcontrollers to supercomputers.
And this is the 400th newsletter, with a history stretching back nearly 10 years. We’ve brought you the latest in the industry every week and I personally appreciate every reader for their time. This community is a shining example of what makes hardware and software special. – 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:
Celebrating 400 Newsletters
First started on November 15, 2016, the Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter has been published for nearly ten years and has reached 400 issues! We could not have done this without the fabulous worldwide community of Python programmers who work tirelessly and share their results with everyone else. Thank you. Check out the archive – Adafruit Daily.
CircuitPython Day 2026 Wrap-up
CircuitPython Day 2026 last Friday was fabulous! The talks were great and makers debuted some new CircuitPython content. Catch the YouTube playlist of talks given if you missed anything – YouTube.
CircuitPython on the new Bao Chip
The new Bao microcontroller from Andrew ‘bunnie’ Huang has a new CircuitPython port and Adafruit’s Phil Torrone has been doing real world kicking the tires. No “blinks an LED”, the Bao + CircuitPython is doing real world work in a number of examples. “GPIO bit-bang ~92 khz from Python, PWM hitting 100 hz→100 khz exactly, ADC stats, 3000 softfloat sin+div in 379 ms with no FPU, generative ASCII art seeded from the factory UID, different on every baochip, identical on yours. best ‘look what this is’ live ADC bar graph at 20 fps”. And the sound generation is fantastic – YouTube.
Hear the music – X.
CircuitPython 10.3.0 Released #CircuitPythonDay2026
Scott, Tim and Dan from the CircuitPython Team discuss all the new things in Friday’s CircuitPython release – YouTube.
Extending CircuitPython with Native Modules #CircuitPythonDay2026
For CircuitPython Day 2025, Mike Coats installed CircuitPython on an unsupported board. “I then went on to write a Python-based driver for the AT42QT2120, late last year, and published it to the Community Bundle. This year, for CircuitPython Day 2026, I wanted to get closer to the metal and write a module in C that I could call from CircuitPython.” – mikecoats.com Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. Via Mastodon.
Pine64 Halts All Linux Hardware Manufacturing Through At Least Mid-2027 Due to Shortages
Pine64 has stopped producing Linux devices entirely, announcing this week on its official Telegram news channel that “there isn’t [sic] any plans to continue producing more Linux devices in the near future” because of the ongoing DRAM and eMMC shortage. The stoppage covers the company’s full lineup of Arm and RISC-V single-board computers – Tom’s Hardware and CNX.
MicroPython and CircuitPython: Python[‘]s Quiet Takeover of IoT and Robotics
MicroPython and CircuitPython: Pythons Quiet Takeover of IoT and Robotics by Sayed Mahbub Hasan Amiri, Atiar Zahan – arxiv. Via X.
RISC-V: They Should Have Known Better
Dmitry Grinberg goes where few would: does the architecture of RISC-V truly live up to its reputation? – dmitry.gr.
“The first and simplest-to-grasp issue is that one cannot be best for all use cases. RISC-V fans would have you believe that RISC-V will soon own all supercomputers, while also owning all the tiny microcontroller use cases, and all things in between. This is impossible, and would be equally impossible for any ISA. Simply put, the things a high-end CPU needs are diametrically opposed to the things a small cost-saving microcontroller core needs.”
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, Scott looked at Zephyr BLE workflow.
You can see the latest video and past videos on the Adafruit YouTube channel under the Deep Dive playlist – YouTube.
John Park’s Workshop Live CircuitPython Day 8/21/26
John Park’s Workshop special live CircuitPython Day – YouTube.
Catch all the episodes in the YouTube playlist.
Deep Dive with Tim
Last week, Tim was reviewing CircuitPython core changes for the Teenage Engineering SP-1.
You can see the latest video and past videos on the Adafruit YouTube channel under the Deep Dive playlist – YouTube.
The CircuitPython Show
Scott Shawcroft, CircuitPython’s project lead, returns to the show. Scott and Paul chat about Zephyr, a look back at ten years of CircuitPython and where it might go next, a CircuitPython powered Gameboy cartridge, and more. – The CircuitPython Show.
CircuitPython Weekly Meeting
CircuitPython Weekly Meeting for August 17, 2026 (notes) on YouTube.
Project of the Week: WiFi Sense Sees Through Walls
WiFi Sense by The-Masked-Bear sees motion, presence and breathing through walls, using nothing but ordinary WiFi signals. An ESP32-S3 measures the WiFi radio channel 100 times a second. A Raspberry Pi 4 analyses it. A browser shows the result live. No camera, no PIR sensor, nothing worn — and it detects a person sitting perfectly still by picking up their chest moving as they breathe – GitHub. Via Hackaday.
Popular Last Week
What was the most popular, most clicked link, in last week’s newsletter? The Raspberry Pi’s 15-year reign is quietly ending — here’s why.
Did you know you can read past issues of this newsletter in the Adafruit Daily Archive? Check it out.
Adafruit Playground Notes
Adafruit Playground is a 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.
News From Around the Web
Iris color detection with Raspberry Pi and Jupyter Notebook – Raspberry Pi News and GitHub.
The first CPython 3.15 release candidate Python 3.15.0rc1 is available – python.org.
The new Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 Programming Jig is a single-head provisioning system that programs a Compute Module 5 with an operating system and security configuration – Raspberry Pi News and Jeff Geerling. Via X.
ESP32-S31 vs S3 vs P4: A complete 2026 selection guide – Elecrow.
Python type hints explained – YouTube.
Vladimír Smitka at Maker Class has ported the game Pictor by Miroslav Nemecek to the RP2040 in CircuitPython using Picogame – X.
Work in progress – An Arduino Modulino based robot, with a Raspberry Pi and an Adafruit QT Py too. Running MicroPython – X.
A moving 5 claw stand using Python – GitHub. Via Raspberry Pi News.
These Raspberry Pi builds make everyday hobbies better – How-To Geek.
A Tab5 Tulip CC Invader-style game written in MicroPython – X. (Japanese)
Calculating the carbon footprint of Raspberry Pi products – Raspberry Pi News.
EuroPython 2026 video playlist – view to see Guido in that hat – YouTube.
Getting the Steam Deck LCD working on a Raspberry Pi – Jeff Geerling.
Volos Projects took a Waveshare PocketTerm35 Raspberry Pi 5 on vacation instead of a laptop – YouTube.
Five useful ESP32 projects that work perfectly without the internet – XDA.
The Microcifra 26 Cyberdeck is a retro cyberdeck with surveillance and information-broadcasting capabilities, using Linux and Python – hackster.io.
How to create Python Virtual Environments on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Linux – YouTube.
Five Python libraries that make data cleaning more enjoyable – KDnuggets.
New
NXP has introduced the MCX A5 family of Cortex-M33 MCUs, which features a 10/100Mbps Ethernet MAC and an integrated 10BASE-T1S Single Pair Ethernet digital PHY. It targets industrial and networking applications such as controllers, PLCs, remote I/O, building and energy management systems, and other connected edge devices. The MCUs run at up to 240 MHz and feature up to 2 MB dual-bank Flash and 640 KB SRAM, along with multiple communication interfaces and analog peripherals. Security features include an EdgeLock accelerator, secure boot with PQC hybrid support, secure firmware updates, lifecycle management, secure debug, external Flash encryption, and anti-tamper monitoring – CNX.
M5Stack introduced the PaperColor ESP32-S3 devkit last May, but if you prefer faster refresh rates, the new Paper Mono should be a better option. The kit is based on a 3.97-inch monochrome e-Paper touch display and also supports LoRa and NFC long-range and short-range connectivity. The devkit features 8MB PSRAM, 16MB flash, a microSD card slot, a PDM microphone and buzzer for audio interaction, a 6-axis IMU, an RTC, and a few buttons and an RGB LED. The Paper Mono doesn’t come with any expansion port and is powered by a USB-C port and a 1150 mAh battery. A Lite version is also offered without LoRa and NFC – CNX.
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.
This week there were no new boards added.
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:
The Adafruit Learning System
The Adafruit Learning System has over 3,200 free guides for learning skills and building projects including using Python.
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 577!
New Libraries
Here is this week’s new CircuitPython library:
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
I’ve been finishing off fixing BLE workflow issues in the past week. Fixes were required in CircuitPython and in the components of code.circuitpython.org. I’m retesting on the three major OS platforms. Linux pairing/bonding is awkward and will need to be well-documented.
Tim
I have been working on adding CircuitPython support to the Teenage Engineering SP-1, a STEM player device that was not officially released as planned, but is available via a liquidation market. This week my focus has been cleaning up the changes in the core. I’m mostly removing things that were put in place during development for additional diagnostics and profiling that helped figure out issues and decide ways to implement various things. I’ve also made some improvements to the Python fader demo code so it plays back more cleanly. Late last week I implemented support for the EMMC storage chip on the device and set it up to use a FAT filesystem and automount as mass storage instead of requiring a special media loader and format.
Scott
This past week I’ve been working on enabling the BLE workflow on Zephyr. Pairing and bonding have been merged in along with a new board definition for Clue. The Clue is a good test platform because it has a lot built in. Today I got BLE workflow working so now I’m polishing the changes up and ensuring there are some basic tests as well.
Liz
This week I’ve been working on coordinating CircuitPython Day. This newsletter goes out after the festivities, but if you missed any of the sessions you can check out this YouTube playlist. Big thanks to everyone who participated and helped out with getting everything ready.
Upcoming Events
The next MicroPython Meetup in Melbourne will be on August 26 – Luma. You can see recordings of previous meetings on YouTube.
PyCon AU 2026 will be 26 Aug. 2026 – 30 Aug. 2026 in Brisbane, Australia.
Other Events This Year
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 10.2.1 and its unstable release is 10.3.0-alpha.4. New to CircuitPython? Start with our Welcome to CircuitPython Guide.
20260815 is the latest Adafruit CircuitPython library bundle.
20260819 is the latest CircuitPython Community library bundle.
v1.28.0 is the latest MicroPython release. Documentation for it is here.
3.14.7 is the latest Python release. The latest pre-release version is 3.15.0rc1.
4,544 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.
38,899 Thanks
The Adafruit Discord community, where we do all our CircuitPython development in the open, reached over 38,899 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. To contribute your content, please email your news to cpnews (at) adafruit (dot) com with information and link(s) to your content.
Join the Adafruit Discord or post to the forum if you have questions.
