2023 was an unexpectedly difficult year for me. My mom was diagnosed with late stage pancreatic cancer in November and passed away at the end of December. In that time we spent a bunch of family time together and I’m grateful to Limor, Phil, the rest of my Adafruit colleagues and the CircuitPython community for allowing me to do that. I love working with all of you.

Last year, I wrote about how 2023 would be rebalancing towards more CircuitPython and it was… until November. Before then, Ari started daycare (reliable childcare is wonderfully freeing) and I moved my office out of the house into a separate space. That left me with more, dedicated time to work on CircuitPython, re-engage with the CircuitPython community, and start streaming Deep Dives again. It makes me happy.

CircuitPython is something special to me. I’ve spent the last seven-ish years of my career working to make computing more accessible through CircuitPython. Losing my mom has made me think about how I’m spending my time and I think CircuitPython is worthwhile. Computers are incredible tools that everyone should have access to.

I’m looking forward to continuing to push CircuitPython’s ease-of-use, openness and capabilities in 2024 so more folks are empowered by technology.

Workflows

Every year I talk about how folks can edit CircuitPython code and this year is no different. I call this the “workflow” and it is critical to who has the technology to develop their own code for CircuitPython. The original USB workflow required a cable between a CircuitPython-capable device and desktop or laptop.

Mobile

Last year I highlighted how much progress we made on mobile editing via PyLeap and File Glider on iOS and Android. You can now wirelessly edit from a mobile device over BLE and WiFi. Not many people do though. To many people it is still a fantasy. They don’t know you can. It is no longer a technical problem, it is a knowledge problem. In 2024, I’m hoping we can grow the number of people who know they can edit from a mobile device. There are a few ways I can see us growing mobile use:

• Presenting about CircuitPython at a conference or two this year about our workflows.
• Projects and corresponding guides that require wireless programming when in an enclosure.
• Web workflow from a desktop leads folks to the wireless world.

Of course, as more folks use these workflows, they’ll find bugs that we can fix to improve the experience. This workflow is super new and is a long term bet.

Standalone

In 2024 I’m looking forwards to exploring a standalone CircuitPython workflow. In 2023 we add DVI video support with picodvi and  RGB “dotclock” display support which provide higher resolution displays from CircuitPython. We also added USB Host support with native keyboard support. So now you can view the serial output on a display and enter serial data via a keyboard. These actions are the core of a workflow.

This year we should combine these two features into one board that can be used as a standalone CircuitPython computer. This will allow folks to program a CircuitPython device without another computer at all. Right now it will be tricky because there is no built in text editor. However, we can pull inspiration from the 8-bit era of computers and more modern “fantasy consoles” to explore editing and running code on one CircuitPython device.

Return of Adabox

I’m excited to see Adabox return in 2024. As I’ve talked about, documenting, explaining and marketing new capabilities of CircuitPython is critical to their adoption. Implementation alone isn’t enough. Adabox is a great way to highlight the latest and greatest things that CircuitPython can do.

Conclusion

I’m looking forward to this year! We’ve done many cool things with CircuitPython so far and it’s just going to get better. We have a backlog of cool stuff to teach people and will inevitably come up with more cool ideas this year.

Thank you to everyone who makes CircuitPython and it’s community amazing. I’m so happy to be here.