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by eblanshey 628 days ago
I would think the portability of, say, a Python application running on Linux is a nice benefit. Try switching from one MCU to a totally different one and you may have to start from scratch (e.g. try going from Microchip to STM.) Can you describe why embedded Linux is still a slog? And what do you think it would take for the issues to be addressed?
2 comments
makapuf 628 days ago
I thought we were talking about real-time applications, which I'm not sure Python is (even tuning the GC). But if we're talking about the difficulty of changing MCU families (remember stm32 are >1000 different chips) changing OS is also difficult, even changing from yocto to buildroot can also be a lot of pain on linux.
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wongarsu 628 days ago
Doesn't Micropython already get you 95% of the way towards just running the same Python code on multiple MCUs?
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eblanshey 628 days ago
I'm not sure, I've never used it. But I think the issue is that the number of MCUs that support micropython is very small.
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magicalhippo 628 days ago
MicroPython supports[1] PIC16 and SAMD21/SAMD51, STM32, ESP8266/ESP32 and more, but it also supports Zephyr as a target, and with it the platforms Zephyr supports[2].

So yeah not everything under the sun, but certainly not what I'd consider a "very small" number of MCUs.

Of course, support level varies among the platforms, but you're not going to be doing too fancy things in MicroPython I imagine.

[1]: https://github.com/micropython/micropython?tab=readme-ov-fil...

[2]: https://docs.zephyrproject.org/latest/boards/index.html

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