Wippersnapper Wednesday: Adding Third Party Boards #Wippersnapper #IoT @adafruitio @adafruit
If you have a favorite development board, or have designed a microcontroller board capable of running Wippersnapper firmware, you can easily add it to Wippersnapper. A benefit of using Adafruit IO is that the service “plays nice with any device”. We do not require specialty hardware produced by Adafruit to connect to Adafruit IO – and now Wippersnapper. This functionality was originally suggested by tannewt/Scott and we’ve kept it in mind while designing Wippersnapper
Here’s a brief overview of what the process for adding your board to Wippersnapper should look like when we launch. Keep in mind that the information below is likely to change as we are in active development of this service
We’ll have an open source GitHub repository containing hardware definitions for boards which are compatible with Wippersnapper. What do we mean by hardware definitions? Hardware definitions provide information about the physical components which make up a development board (pins, sensors, etc). The definition also provides properties for each component such as a sensor’s expected SI unit or if a GPIO pin is writable. Each definition is specific to a board and is described using JSON.
The benefit of a board definition iswhen a Wippersnapper device connects to Adafruit IO, Wippersnapper automatically creates a virtual representation of your physical hardware and you can interact with it immediately.
Similar to the process for adding a new board to CircuitPython, you will need to update the open source Wippersnapper firmware to include information about your board. If you’re using hardware similar to what the firmware already supports (launch platforms include – ESP32, ESP8266, Raspberry Pi, ESP32 AirLift Co-Processor hardware), you can simply add a few lines to the code to update information about your board’s unique identifiers. If you’re adding a new board or network interface hardware, there is a larger amount of work involved and we’ll work with you over discord or github to help add support for it.
Keep in mind – this is all under active development. If you have comments (please keep them constructive!), post up below. We’d love to hear your feedback on this process.
8-6-2021 (August 6, 2021) is the Snakiest day of the year and it’s also this year’s CircuitPython Day! The day highlights all things CircuitPython and Python on Hardware. See you there!
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
