FoamyGuy’s #CircuitPython2025

My thoughts around CircuitPython in 2025 break down broadly into general wishes and thoughts about the project and more personalized and specific thoughts, goals and ideas for myself.

For the project generally:

I am intrigued by the prospect of potentially integrating with zephyr, though some of the finer details of what this entails and what impacts it will have are over my head, from what I’ve understood listening to Scott talk about it in meetings and on Deep Dive there are interesting and good benefits that it could offer. I think I recall a mention or two on the possibility of using LVGL, which is definitely something I’d be happy to see happen, even if it’s in a limited capacity or not fully exposed imediately. I’m also looking forward to some of the new crypto functionality being implemented primarily for circuitmatter. While I don’t have specific uses for it in mind, I do have a hobbyist interest in cryptography and playing with the crypto implementations on circuitpython and microcontrollers is a fun intersection interests for me. I’d also mention that I’ve been happy to see some of the new features and functionality around audio from 2024 and am excited to see whats ahead, I need to make it a point to play with more of this in 2025.

For me more specifically:

Throughout the end of 2024 and continuing into 2025 I increased how much time each week that I am working on CircuitPython. My prior full time job has been winding down, and I’ve moved to Adafruit and CircuitPython work being my primary work. It has been great to be able to spend more time on CircuitPython in the last month or two, and I am looking forward to more in 2025.

One goal of mine is to get more comfortable with C code like the CircuitPython core and Arduino drivers that ultimately get ported to CircuitPython implementations. Prior to working on small things inside of the CircuitPython core I had no experience or education with C, I’ve learned a lot by tinkering inside of the core, but I’d like to level up further and get the fundamentals down better. Perhaps a worthy goal is getting this skill to a point where I could be useful in helping the effort to one day use LVGL with CircuitPython.

Another goal is getting more practice with and understanding of I2C driver libraries. Recently I worked with Liz on the VCNL4200 driver which was my first time really diving into the internals of this type of library. In the new year I hope to get more experience with it by working on more driver libraries for new breakouts.

An on-going goal of mine is creating useful displayio widgets. The only specific one in the works right now is scrollable list that shows a fixed number of items visually but allows scrolling through a larger list of items. I’m sure some others will come up throughout the year, I’ve heard that there may be some circular display projects in my future, so perhaps some more things suited to them are in order.

A potentially smaller thing I’m looking forward to tinkering with in 2025 is Meshtastic. I’ve picked up a few of the starter boards that are recomended to bein with and already have a CircuitPython port avaialble. I’m interested to play with Meshtastic generally and then see what if any posibilities there are for CircuitPython integration.

Lastly I’d love to work on more games for CircuitPython in 2025. I created a few for learn guides in 2024, and look forward more this year. On the personal project side I’m also aiming for a more ambitious game project than any of my previous. I’ve started building out a few of the componenets it will use, and doing some testing on graphics approaches and their memory usage to figure out how big I can reasonably aim for the world and number of different items.

Wishing everyone in the CircuitPython community a Happy New Year. Have fun tinkering in 2025 Tim

January 3, 2025 AT 1:31 pm