fivebyfive VS ESP32-C3FH4-RGB

I used my experience from the early months of the year, when I was really digging in and learning about the current state of MicroPython, to inform my talk - including some of the projects and discoveries from my DEV series. The video was published recently.

MicroPython has led me along a number of different paths - since it runs on a whole variety of different hardware. In February a tiny ESP32-C3-powered board covered in RGB LEDs caught the attention of the maker community, and I subsequently wrote a small blog series and created a project around it (fivebyfive on GitHub). It also highlighted a few learning opportunities around MicroPython on the ESP32-C3, which have been addressed in the current release. The worldwide chip shortage has meant that the RP2040 chips from the Raspberry Pi folks have been more available than some alternatives, so I've been playing with a lot of boards based on those, but until about a week ago, connectivity was more of an issue than with the Espressif chips!

Most recently, I’ve been learning about MicroPython.

In the previous post, I got everything working pretty nicely with the basics on the board - we had flashed a working MicroPython build, and had a simple piece of code that exercised the NeoPixel LEDs. Since writing that post, I also created a reference card (image above - there's a PDF, and the source GoodNotes file, on GitHub as well); and updated the code a little to add a test for the onboard status LED and programmable button.

Since the manufacturer's content is limited to a YouTube video, and the Arduino code, I've documented various experiments and findings on GitHub in a set of discovery notes.

I just got my AMD Framework 13, which I'm mostly happy with, but I'm in the same boat. It's great that's it's possible to attach these devices to the laptop, but the true nature of this seems to be that you have to make these things because there isn't a real market for them beyond what Framework is selling.

I did come up with something I would want enough that I'm willing to try to make it though. Taking inspiration from some other modules like it, I'm currently looking into adding this microcontroller with a transparent case:

https://github.com/01Space/ESP32-C3FH4-RGB

If I'm happy with it, I was going to try to have it show battery status like some other laptops have. This might be possible by wiring up another microcontroller to the SMBus on the battery. I'm still researching that part though.

The manufacturer software for the board is on GitHub, and works absolutely fine with the Arduino IDE. I'm using the new Arduino IDE 2.0, and one thing to note is that you also need the Espressif development release core for the ESP32-C3 board - these are relatively new within the family of chips.