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Notes document is available here, with timecodes: https://github.com/adafruit/adafruit-circuitpython-weekly-meeting/blob/main/2025/2025-03-31.md

0:00 Housekeeping

3:34 Community News

7:10 State of CircuitPython, Libraries amp; Blinka

17:04 Hug Reports

20:12 Status Updates

26:00 In the Weeds

26:22 Wrap-up

Join here for the chat all week: http://adafru.it/discord

The CircuitPython Weekly normally is held at 2pm US ET/11am us PT on Mondays. Check the #circuitpython-dev channel on Discord for notices of change in time and links to past meetings. Meeting times are also available in iCal format using the following link: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/adafruit/adafruit-circuitpython-weekly-meeting/master/meeting.ical or view it in your browser: https://open-web-calendar.herokuapp.com/calendar.html?url=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/adafruit/adafruit-circuitpython-weekly-meeting/master/meeting.ical

CircuitPython development is sponsored by Adafruit. Please support them by purchasing hardware from https://adafruit.com.

Reminders: Podcast available on most services. Let us know if we’re missing some.

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This week was slow for hardware development—we were getting over being under the weather. But we did poke a little at a PCM5122 breakout board (https://www.digikey.com/short/fnf9t0b1). This chip can do software or hardware control of I2S signals and is preferred by folks who want something a little nicer than the PCM5102 (https://www.adafruit.com/product/6250).

We also wrapped up our design for the 8x solenoid driver board—the biggest update is adding indicator LEDs.

Lastly, we got our prototypes for the "USB CC Fixer" adapter, which we mostly made so we could charge a really annoying baby monitor, but probably other folks will want to buy it, too.

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We've been putting a lot of I2S DACs in the shop, like the PCM5102 (https://www.digikey.com/short/fnf9t0b1) and TLV320DAC3100 (https://www.digikey.com/short/wj2d8w2h), and working on more like the PCM5122 (https://www.digikey.com/short/fnf9t0b1).

What we'd really like is an I2S speaker amplifier that is preferably stereo and can do more than 5W—e.g., a cross between the MAX98357 (https://www.adafruit.com/product/3006) and MAX9744 (https://www.adafruit.com/product/1752).

Let's see what we can find!

See the chosen part on DigiKey https://www.digikey.com/short/1v038d8z

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Testing a PCM5122 I2S DAC, adding LEDs to the 8x solenoid driver, and prototyping a "USB CC Fixer" to charge a tricky baby monitor. Also we're on the hunt for a stereo I2S amp with 5W+ output.

Join Scott as he finishes up work on LVGL font on disk support and answers any questions folks have. He's been trying Windsurf AI assistant for coding too!

Visit the Adafruit shop online - http://www.adafruit.com

Thanks to dcd for timecodes:

0:00 Getting started

1:11 Hello everyone - welcome to Deep Dive

2:15 Fruit Jam will be available in the future

2:40 Thanks to Tim / FoamyGuy for filling the past few weeks

3:00 Scott will not be doing Deep Dives in May

4:40 Status update: Added third drive to CP

7:00 NerdSnipping - supporting emojis

8:37 unifoundry.com emojis

9:14 added lvmfont to the Adafruit_CircuitPython_BitMap_Font library

10:05 used Claude code to generate file parsing code (it checks for error message from compiler)

12:00 Demo of what is working so far - using new capture card - live output from Fruit Jam

13:16 Windsurf - (a fork of vscode)

14:13 emojipedia.org

15:01 partypopper, parting face, and other emojis

15:40 fonts loaded off the "disk" - not using all the RAM

17:13 NERD FONTS nerdfonts.com - fetching rain cloud icon

21:26 Status Bar emojis vs. terminal emojis

22:40 meta-period to get to emoji selector

23:09 emojipedia / wire keyboard / unicode plains

24:30 Circuitpython-font-generator (created by AI Friend)

26:53 Unicode Character Ranges at jrgraphix.net

27:18 using Cascade AI to help generate code - using Windsurf for code review

30:26 Might look at RooCode in the future

37:08 eject the drive and restart

39:07 Look at Claude code

43:22 vscode issues - the constant pop-ups....

48:55 check out the Japanese fonts - ( see tio showing the fonts )

54:45 return to windsurf and add some debug prints

1:00:27 Disable some of the serial mirroring

1:11:23 More debugging required :-)

1:27:06 fix might be to use the counts...54:45 return to windsurf and add some debug prints

1:00:27 Disable some of the serial mirroring

1:11:23 More debugging required :-)

1:27:06 fix might be to use the counts...54:45 return to windsurf and add some debug prints

1:00:27 Disable some of the serial mirroring

1:11:23 More debugging required :-)

1:27:06 fix might be to use the counts...54:45 return to windsurf and add some debug prints

1:00:27 Disable some of the serial mirroring

1:11:23 More debugging required :-)

1:27:06 fix might be to use the counts...54:45 return to windsurf and add some debug prints

1:00:27 Disable some of the serial mirroring

1:11:23 More debugging required :-)

1:27:06 fix might be to use the counts...

1:29:46 add ascii font also to a few languages

1:33:10 that fixed it - ascii in title bar and terminal

1:34:44 update settings.toml ( selecting fonts? )

1:38:00 staging changes and rebuild

1:42:35 now we have emojis

1:45:10 how to get cascade to remember context

1:48:50 edit ing .windsurfrules

1:49:29 claude created CLAUDE.md, windsurf didn't

1:51:38 stage more changes and git commit --amend

1:53:41 the new HDMI capture card was XR1 lite from EVGA ( was using the adafruit card )

1:56:46 wrap-up

1:58:39 artifacts in the circuitpython-font-generator

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#circuitpythonparsec

Here's a demo of Feather RP2040 USB Host running a USB gamepad to read data and remap button presses inside of CircuitPython.

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-feather-rp2040-with-usb-type-a-host/usb-host-read-data

https://github.com/jedgarpark/parsec/blob/main/2025-03-25/

https://www.adafruit.com/product/5723

Learn about CircuitPython: https://circuitpython.org

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John Park's Workshop Live 3/27/25

Larsio Paint Music

CircuitPython Parsec

JPPPoW recap

Projects

and more!

Visit the Adafruit shop online - http://www.adafruit.com

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USB Wired Mouse - Two Buttons plus Wheel (0:05)

https://www.adafruit.com/product/2025

Raspberry Pi PoE+ Injector (0:32) https://www.adafruit.com/product/6281

Pimoroni Plasma 2350 W - Wireless RP2350 LED Driver - PIM729 (1:40)

https://www.adafruit.com/product/6246

Pimoroni Inky Frame 7.3" - Pico 2 W Aboard - PIM737 (2:54)

https://www.adafruit.com/product/6247

Adafruit ESP32-S3 Reverse TFT with w.FL Antenna (4:30)

https://www.adafruit.com/product/6303

Adafruit TLV320DAC3100 - I2S DAC with Headphone and Speaker Out (5:32)

https://www.adafruit.com/product/6309

Visit the Adafruit shop online - http://www.adafruit.com

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For this week's EYE ON NPI, we'll Hazard a guess that you'll be excited to see the Raspberry Pi RP2350 chip available for purchase at Digi-Key for integration into your next design. We've been working with this chip for a few months and it's quickly becoming our favorite Arm Cortex chip, with fun peripherals and a well-supported toolchain. It also is one of the first mass-produced RISC-V chips: one that you can buy and start using for trying out RISC-V development without the 'risc' of worrying you may have picked the wrong core. Available in two chip sizes and with a boost in performance and peripherals, the RP2350 (https://www.digikey.com/short/mzpjhptm) represents a big upgrade to the RP2040 (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/raspberry-pi/SC0914-13/14306010) that you've seen take over the microcontroller world over the last 4 years.

Raspberry Pi is famous for their single board computers (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/single-board-computers-sbcs/933) so much so that they created a full market for sub-$100 all-in-one PCs. The big disruption we feel they brought to the market was the creation of a hackable and open-source ecosystem with good main-line OS and driver support. With well-written documentation and up-to-date Linux software, purchasing a Pi meant you got to join in with a community that was having fun, not struggling with compiling out-of-tree kernel modules and closed-source firmware. So in 2021 when they announced the RP2040, folks were interested: could a SBC maker design low power silicon? Turns out, yes! The RP2040 was a fun dual-core 133 MHz Cortex-M0+ processor, with 264K of SRAM, with a satisfying collection of peripherals: USB, ADC, UART/SPI/I2C, PWM, DMA and timers plus the nifty PIO state machine (https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/what-is-pio/). The killer feature, though, was the price: at $1 a chip, and tons of availability with an on-going chip shortage, the RP2040 won our hearts and soldering stations!

Three years later, Raspberry Pi is back with a sequel: The RP2350A (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/microcontrollers/685?s=N4IgTCBcDaIE4AcwGYCsAGAgiAugXyA) and RP2350B (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/microcontrollers/685?s=N4IgTCBcDaIE4AcwGYCsAGAQiAugXyA) two variants of an upgrade chip that keeps what was great about the '2040 but with some boosts. First up, the core was upgraded from dual Cortex-M0's to the M33: this means you get an FPU and better low-power performance, plus TrustZone security. The core is spec'd for 150MHz but we've overclocked it to 264MHz without too much complaint. You also have the option to get dual RISC-V cores (https://riscv.org/) instead. SRAM was also bumped: from 264K to 520KB. This is great for running interpreted languages like MicroPython (https://micropython.org/) or CircuitPython (https://circuitpython.org/).

Like the original, the RP2350 does not have any built in FLASH memory. Instead, you will need to wire it to a QSPI flash memory chip (https://www.digikey.com/short/80t4zt5t). This way you can pick from 1 MBytes to 16 MBytes whatever your code size needs. This new chip adds the ability to wire in PSRAM (https://www.digikey.com/short/d8033bfw) to the same QSPI bus plus an extra chip select. This is not going to be nearly as fast as on-chip SRAM, but it's great when you want large working memory that the chip will manage for you: by configuring it in the CMakefile, you 'magically' get a huge area you can malloc. Another improvement is in the number of PIO blocks: the original had 2, the RP2350 has 3.

The two biggest new features we found are the new HSTX peripheral and the 80-QFN RP2350B (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/microcontrollers/685?s=N4IgTCBcDaIE4AcwGYCsAGAQiAugXyA) variant. HSTX stands for High Speed Transmission and its a high-speed peripheral that can drive 8 output lines - note that it's output only! There's a few possible use cases, but the core reasoning is that this lets you control a DVI display directly from the chip using just the DMA and internal memory without requiring overclocking, PIO, or an extra core. Note that the built in SRAM limits the size of the display if you want to have a video buffer: you can do 320x240 @16bpp or 640x480 @8bpp but, still! Second, if you found the original QFN-60 a bit constraining in terms of GPIO, the QFN-80 'B' version has 20 extra GPIO available for just 10 cents more.

If you've been doing grabby-hands in hopes of getting a reel of RP2350 chips into your next design: today is your lucky day! Digi-Key has these chips in stock RIGHT NOW for immediate shipment. You can get a reel of either A or B type chips, with cut tape individual components coming shortly. Both types are great, but recently we've been having a lot of fun with the roomy B type (https://www.digikey.com/short/mzpjhptm), with the extra GPIO. Order today and you can start integrating the trendiest new silicon into your new PCB assembly by tomorrow afternoon.

The hush-hush news from Adafruit in Industry City, Brooklyn, New York. Broadcast March 26, 2025

These are items or concept products that may/might/could be introduced into the Adafruit store in the future (or not)! It's not out yet, so please don't ask questions or ask when it'll be available....

Check out the Adafruit store for all the great products that are available and for coming soon products you can sign up to be notified when they are in stock. https://www.adafruit.com/new

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Also visit DigiKey for Adafruit products at http://www.digikey.com/

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