MicroPython Boards

In this tutorial, we focused on the BBC micro:bit for our introduction to MicroPython. But this is not the only board to support the language, rather there are many more alternatives:

The pyboard The original board developed in 2013 by Damien George is a smaller development board that shares some similarities to the micro:bit, such as a 3-axis accelerometer. It also uses a STM32F405RG micro controller, Cortex M4 CPU that’s clocked at 168MHz, and has 192KiB of RAM for your projects. But what if your project is bigger? Fear not as the pyboard comes with a microSD card slot! Additionally, the pyboard comes with 29 IO pins.

There’s no dedicated MicroPython editor for this board, rather you plug the board into your computer and use a standard text editor to write your code. The version of MicroPython used with the pyboard is a little more complex than that which is supported by micro:bit, but it still follows the standards that are required for it to be considered a Python language. You can read more about it at https://micropython.org.

Wipy This is a MicroPython-powered board for Internet of Things (IoT) applications. This board comes with a Cortex M4 processor and a Texas Instruments CC3200 MCU (Micro Controller Unit) for Wi-Fi connectivity. The Wipy board also features 25 IO pins, a real time clock and hash/ encryption engines for SHA, MD5, DES and AES, which makes it a good board for IoT research projects. Programming the Wipy is done via a special editor called Pymakr. You can read more about it at https://www.pycom.io/solutions/ py-boards/wipy1.