Wow, these preassembled ESP32 plus touchscreen boards are extremely cheap, and there are tons of them in all kinds of different form factors on Amazon. I didn't realize this kind of thing was so plentiful, this seems like a great way to bootstrap many kinds of electronics/IoT projects
So, am I right in assuming that ESP32, being simple and slow, isn't going to have cache lines or anything, and would just need 1-2 cycles to access its RAM? In which case a pointer-chasing dynamic language like python wouldn't have all of the typical performance penalties from constant cache misses?
EDIT: upon further research, I think the above assumptions are more or less all wrong, starting with the "simple" part. To start with, they're Harvard-architecture-ish with separate memory pathways - and caches - for data and instructions, so off the bat they have more heterogeneity than your modern general purpose CPUs. Also there seems to be a very wide variety of memory mappings, buses, and caching systems within ESP32 "family". [1]
[1] https://developer.espressif.com/blog/2024/08/esp32-memory-ma...
Micro python is the last hope for Python. Python simplicity got destroyed by a bunch of new wave of programmers who packed a lot of new useless features into it in the past 10 yrars. Now it's NOT easy and small language as it used to be...
Feature creep is an awful side effect. I would love to have language having just few add-ons per decade so I can grasp it all
Will MicroPythonOS also work with CircuitPython?
CircuitPython docs > Differences from MicroPython: https://docs.circuitpython.org/en/latest/README.html#differe...
Also, there's pipkin: https://github.com/aivarannamaa/pipkin#pipkin :
> Tool for managing distribution packages for MicroPython and CircuitPython on target devices or in a local directory.
> Supports mip- and upip-compatible packages, and regular pip-compatible packages
Hopefully - for 3 types of packages - pipkin supports GPG signatures, PyPI's TUF, and/or sigstore attestations like pip?
Just checked; pip doesn't support checking PEP740 attestations yet either?
pipkin: https://github.com/aivarannamaa/pipkin
trailofbits/pip-plugin-pep740: https://github.com/trailofbits/pip-plugin-pep740
Love me some MicroPython. Building a product line of small farm security devices that use uPy and MQTT.
Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45525804
Looks better than any Python GUI framework I’ve seen..
Python code and resource-constraint device don't seem like a good combo in terms of performance. Is it just for prototyping?
Interesting. Would want to see this going on actual Android. Especially since I have a few Python GUI projects going which I intend to use on Android (but currently using flet).
I would love to have this, but Lua not Python.
I don't understand, unless I'm misreading this OS has no memory protection. In other words: it can't run applications! And this is not fixable! You can never risk executing untrusted or semi-untrusted code with permissions on something like this.
I've always thought that it would be quite simple to pull "an android" but based on wasm (even perhaps using wasm-in-kernel execution). Quite simple, that is, compared to what Android achieved with Java. But this, this just can't work.
how does it compare to https://github.com/wasp-os/wasp-os?
Does this support installing normal Python versions on top, and then developing apps in normal Python? What is the language one writes apps in?
The docs say: "Developers: Learn how to install, build, and extend MicroPythonOS with new apps and features." -- But how? What are app devs using?
Does it run on the CYD? https://github.com/witnessmenow/ESP32-Cheap-Yellow-Display
Really cool. How can this be fast? I'd have thought that Python (even MicroPython) would just be unsuitable for certain things like the graphics and animations, at the very least.
I'd use it. I'd be curious to see how close to daily driving it is for stuff like calls, SMS, and email. Something not driven by a giant data mining company would be splendid.
Would it be possible to slap this on top of FreeRTOS?
While cool, it certainly won't be delivering Android-like performance, due to the lack of JIT and AOT compiler, coupled with PGO metadata, shared via the PlayStore across devices.
Does it support the threading module?
But I don't want an "Android-like user experience", I want something that works and doesn't make me want to pull my hair out and fly to Silicon Valley and punch someone in the face.
[dead]
> Android-like user experience
so crap. No inovation those days.
Interesting.
https://micropythonos.com/
https://github.com/MicroPythonOS/MicroPythonOS
https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/9GGXNF-micropythonos-...