Pycon.de: using python to enter the world of microcontrollers - Jens Nie¶
(One of my summaries of the 2025 pycon.de conference in Darmstadt, DE).
A microcontroller is a combination of CPU, memory, storage and IO on a single cheap chip. He showed: ESP32, STM32, raspberry pi 2350. The lines can be a bit blurred. Raspberry pi variants that are almost a normal computer, for instance.
Computer: multi-user, multi-tasking, always ready to do something. Microcontroller: single task. Can sleep when it doesn’t have to do the task. So: low power consumption, perhaps even suitable for battery operation.
Years and years ago, microcontrollers meant resources measured with k. Now it is
M or even G. From 4 kB to 4 GB…
For microcontrollers you have MicroPython. Very simple to learn and it feels much the same as regular python. Libraries like “requests” and “numpy” are available.
He demoed how he set up monitoring of his power consumption at home with microcontrollers.
Photo explanation: random picture from Darmstadt (DE)