Decide on MicroPython or CircuitPython

[rgov]

MicroPython or Adafruit's fork CircuitPython?

• MicroPython has first-party support for the Pico.

• CircuitPython has third-party support for the Pico.

• CircuitPython documents differences. Some of the key ones for this project are:

  • Floats (aka decimals) are enabled for all builds. (Ed. note: This means floating point operations are much slower on MicroPython. https://github.com/micropython/micropython/issues/6813)

  • Concurrency within Python is not well supported. Interrupts (Ed: https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython/issues/4542) and threading (Ed: https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython/issues/4106) are disabled. async/await keywords are available on some boards for cooperative multitasking. Some concurrency is achieved with native modules for tasks that require it such as audio file playback.

  • Unified hardware APIs.

• PIO programming is supported in both MicroPython (here) and CircuitPython (here).

For timing-critical code (i.e., GPS and RTC PPS) we may need to implement a C extension. (#12)

[rgov]

CircuitPython provides modules out of the box for virtually all of the components on our board, including trickier ones such as the Wi-Fi MCU interface (#8).

[rgov]

I plan to go forward with CircuitPython.