The 29th of April marked the date on which the first line of MicroPython code was written, and MicroPython is now 9 years old! Via the MicroPython Newsletter, Issue 12, here are some highlights at this point:

In the past 12 months, the main MicroPython code has seen:

• 1210 commits, up from 817 in the previous year (there are now 13,393 total commits)
• 147 contributors, up from 93 in the previous year
• And versions v1.16, v1.17 and v1.18 were released.

MicroPython also gained the following new features:

• mpremote, a new command-line tool for interacting with a MicroPython device; find it at PyPI, and read the documentation
• f-strings (PEP-498)
• additions to the mimxrt port: VFS with internal flash storage, Pin, ADC, UART, Timer, RTC, I2C, SPI, SDRAM, SD card and LAN support
• additions to the rp2 port: RTC, networking and Bluetooth support, more boards
• additions to the samd port: filesystem using internal flash; Pin, LED classes
• machine.I2S on stm32, esp32, rp2 and mimxrt ports
• boosted performance of the VM and runtime by the addition of an optional cache to speed up general hash table lookups
• board.json metadata for each supported board, and corresponding automated building of firmware for the download page.
• simplification of configuration of features via a feature level setting, which aims to make the ports more consistent in what Python features they offer
• And many other things!

GitHub Sponsors has been growing well over the past year, and MicroPython is now receiving USD $4150/month, up from USD $1250/month this time last year. This funding is greatly appreciated and goes towards maintaining the open source code. You can find the sponsorship page here.

It has been a very busy 12 months and things are not slowing down! The project plans to release v1.19 very soon, which includes a completely reworked .mpy file format to facilitate freezing Python code without rebuilding firmware. And there are many other items in the works.

Go to micropython.org to check out what’s happening.