Paul Cutler

[Music]

Welcome to the Circuit Python Show. I'm your host Tod Kurt, taking over hosting

duties from the show's actual host Paul Cutler so that he can be a guest. Paul has

been using computers since a young age but did learn to code until he was in

his 40s. Paul has been contributing to open source projects for almost 20 years

including the Gnome Project and the Discogs Python Client. When he's not in

front of his computer you can find him listening to records from his vinyl

record collection. Paul, welcome to the show. It's great to be here, thanks for

guest hosting. Hey, my pleasure. I love the Circuit Python Show. So I guess we

should get to start with your background. How did you first get started with

computers and electronics? You know, I've been pretty privileged that I've been

around computers almost my entire life. I was probably nine or ten when we had our

first computer which was a Timex Sinclair TS-1000, which was really a modified Sinclair

ZX81 is what the rest of the world knew it as. And then we got a second one,

we got the TS-1500 which was a ZX Spectrum just a year or two later and I

played around with those for a couple years. You know, I remember getting those

magazines that were made out of newspaper and entering assembly code

trying to program them. You make one little mistake and you just want to tear

your hair out. But after a couple years we got an Apple IIc and I played around

with that and we got a 300 baud modem which was screaming fast at the time and

I got really into the bulletin board system scene. I loved BBS's and later we

had a 1200 baud modem and I would actually go to in real life meetups with

the different folks I met in the BBS as a teenager and from there it's just a

lifelong love of computers. That's great. So when was the time you started

getting into open source? Was it during the Apple II days or was it later?

Oh it was much later. I was a full-blown adult and it's the fault of the

game EverQuest of all things. So EverQuest came out in '99 and you could

cheat at EverQuest if you had a Linux computer. And I just happened to have a

second computer. I had been playing around with BOS actually a little bit

and then I had actually purchased Red Hat Linux from a retail store six months

earlier but it just sat in my closet until we started playing EQ with all my

friends and I realized I could take that second computer put Linux on it and

cheat at the game which was great. I know. That's cool. So I started using Linux and

I had the second computer next to my gaming computer and the more I used it

the more I liked it and I really loved the ethos that anyone could contribute

to it and after probably four or five years of using Linux this would probably

be around 2004-2005 I had done all the different distro hopping that people had

done. I had tried Ubuntu and I had tried Fedora and by the mid to late 2000s I

found a very small Linux distribution called Foresight and which isn't around

anymore but one of the things that they really tried to do was be really close

to upstream GNOME. So I started contributing to Foresight which led me

to contributing to GNOME and I got really into that. I joined the marketing

team and the sysadmin team even though I didn't really have a lot of sysadmin

skills but I had project management skills which are always needed in open

source projects. Yes, very much. And then I started writing a ton of documentation.

I served one term on the board of directors and yeah and it's been you

know 10 or 15 years since I probably left that scene but I just I loved it so

much. I've made lifelong friends in that community. I was gonna ask you if

you were a gnome or a KDE guy but I guess that answers that question. Oh yeah

I'm a gnome guy there's no doubt about that. And one of the things that I'm probably most proud of is I

was one of the first mentors for the GNOME outreach program for women that

was started in 2010. So I mentored a couple of women for documentation and

that program is still around. It's known today as the Outreachy program. Outreachy

is still around and offers paid internships for those subject to

systemic bias and under representation in tech and it promotes diversity in

open source. So it's kind of cool that it's still around after all these years.

That's great. Yeah the whole very underlooked aspect of open source I

think is the management and documentation of the projects. It's like

everyone's like oh we just just write the good code put it up on a repo and

like you're done. It's like no no no that's just the start you know.

Especially for really complex projects like a distro or a big like GUI

application there's like so many different levels of like you know the

code, the OS integration, the artwork you know it's just a huge

huge task. You're absolutely right and I didn't know how to code at all when I

was contributing so I'm a you know an example that you don't have to know how

to code to be able to give back to an open source project. Right so but at some

point you got into Python after after playing around with all this open source

stuff. I did. How did that happen? I had an itch. I really wanted to learn

programming. My wife is a developer and I had an itch to do it. I had time on my

hands and it was something that I've always wanted to do but never had the

discipline to do it so I went out and I bought a couple of Python books and

realized very quickly that I don't learn from books. I learned from video courses

and from hands-on projects is what I learned through the process so I took a

course on Coursera with Dr. Chuck which taught me the basics of Python. What's a

string? What's an int? You know how to manipulate strings and all that kind of

fun stuff and then right when I was getting into it Michael Kennedy who

hosts the Talk Python to Me podcast started Talk Python training and he had

a Kickstarter of learn Python by creating 10 apps so it was very project

based and was perfect so I bought that Kickstarter and then I kept buying

classes from Talk Python to Me. The way he teaches really clicked for me and it

taught me not just Python but I learned web frameworks like Pyramid and a couple

years later I learned the fast API web framework as well so I'm a big fan of

the Talk Python to Me classes and strongly recommend them for people that

are looking to get into Python. Oh that's cool we should put that in the show

notes I think then yeah? Absolutely I'll link to that. Right on right on and so and then how

long did it take you to find Circuit Python like when when sort of in the

history of Circuit Python did you come in and start playing with that? So I

started Python in about 2017 and I got into Circuit Python because I was into

Python I attended PyCon virtually in 2020 during the pandemic so it was the

first PyCon I ever ever attended which was pretty cool and Microsoft had a

booth a virtual booth at PyCon and if you did an exercise on these exercises

built into github and if you learned and did the exercise you got a $50 Adafruit

gift card and then they had a bonus exercise and I walked away with $100 in

Adafruit gift cards. I did what probably everyone does when you're first

starting out with Adafruit products I bought a Circuit Playground Express and

it probably sat in my in my drawer for a good six months before I got it back out

but it was during the pandemic and there was all we had was time on our hands and

then I started playing around with that and quickly fell in love with Circuit

Python it took two things that I love you know the the coding aspect of it but

combined with that physical world aspect of it here's a device that you can touch

and feel and I just thought that was the coolest thing ever. Yeah I've been

I've been I've bounced off of Python like normal desktop Python many times

over the last like 20 years or whatever always you know learned enough to do a

project and then kind of it you know I finished the project and then it leaves

my brain and I've been really happy with Circuit Python as a way to just learn

Python like I don't know any of the web frameworks yet like you're talking about

like Fast fast fast API fast API yeah like um you know I don't know anything I

don't know you that you need the real Python frameworks but I think I'm pretty

cognizant of how Python thinks in a way that I could actually learn those now

as I definitely could not before. Yeah fast API was a fun one to learn because

it's it was one of the fastest growing Python applications out there and it's

async which is great for a web web server and learning that taught me a lot

about you know how to program asynchronously as well as using the

latest and greatest that things that are out there. And you've got some project

now that you've created that that marries both desktop Python and fast API

and Circuit Python right? I do it's it's probably the the project I'm most proud

of I have a website called silversaucer.com that you can visit it was

inspired by a Neil Gaiman poem of all things and it combines my love of vinyl

records Python and Circuit Python so I learned how to use the Discogs API and

Discogs is a website that's been around for about 25 years and they crowdsource

all the different records and cassettes and CDs that are out there so for example

Pearl Jam's debut album 10 has almost 300 different versions worldwide each

country had their own CD and people have entered all this data into there to

catalog each specific release. So I have a fairly large vinyl record collection as

listeners know and I wanted to learn how to interact with an API and I wanted to

learn how to use fast API so I built a site and it only does three things

there's three buttons on the front one is a random button it'll randomly choose

an album for me to go play it's just an inspiration for me. So anyone on the

internet can say hey Paul go just randomly go pick an album. Well it'll pick

an album for them but it doesn't tell me anything. Oh I see okay. Now if I'm logged

in there's some different functionality when it comes to the Circuit Python stuff

but I'll get to that in a minute. Right right right. And then there's a play

button and if you in that shows you a list of every record I have and you can

select a record and then I'll show you the album art and the song list

underneath it once it loads and then there's an another feature that I built

called On This Day that I scraped both discogs and music brains with my

collection to figure out which day in a certain album was ever released. Oh cool.

So which is another way that I get inspired to go listen to an album it's

like oh you know it's for example and this is kind of a funny one yesterday or

today Debbie Gibson's Electric Youth came out in 1989 which is a record that

I happen to own I love 80s pop music so you know don't laugh at me too hard but

it's a great way to just go pick a record off the shelf and say hey I'm

gonna listen to this now. So once I started getting into Circuit Python I

realized that I could take it a step further. Now my record player is in

another room it's on the opposite side of the wall of my home office down here

in my basement so it's only about 10 feet away but the record sleeve is in

there so I can't see the album art. So I have a pie portal and I decided using

the discogs API it shows me that the album art the download to JPEG that's

displayed on the website while using the pillow library I took that album art and

reformatted it to a pie portal size which I think is about 300 pixels or

320 pixels and when that web page loads if I'm the user who's logged in it will

then send a message using MQTT over Adafruit IO and the pie portal is

listening for that MQTT message and once that page loads and sends the message

the pie portal goes out to my web server downloads the album art and displays it

so that's how I kind of married desktop Python with Circuit Python. So it's a little

thing that sits on your desk and it just displays the album art and oh

that's great as soon as you play to play an album that's cool yeah. Yep as soon as I

choose that album to play on the website and then late last year I bought a 64 by

64 RGB matrix and did the same thing again but now it looks like pixel art

because this is a 64 by 64 image it's tiny by the time it shrinks it down

but it was kind of cool and now I'm actually considering doing it for a

third time and picking up one of those s3 qualia boards with one of the RGB dot

clock displays that are a little bigger than a pie portal but I haven't

spent the money on that yet. Yeah and the color the color rendition of those

displays like they're both like higher density or higher resolution they're

like up to 480 by 480 I think but also they're like I think they're six bit per

channel color instead of the sort of mostly five bit per channel that the

other displays use on my controllers are so it's like it's like man we get to

drive these like real displays and Circuit Python it's kind of incredible

exactly probably the next time I order something from Adafruit I'll pick one of

those up and do the whole project all over again. Totally totally yeah there's

no OS so it just starts up. Exactly. So we talked about like like quality is one of

the new the new things that's going on in Circuit Python what are some other

other things you're excited about that's coming up in in Circuit Python because

it's it's kind of ever-evolving there's new things happening all the time what

are some of the things that you've seen? You know the first two things that come

to mind are the first is the Memento camera I have been waiting for that

thing to come back in stock and I just think it's so cool not only is it an

open-source hardware camera it's programmable and every time I think of a

different way to program it it seems like there's already a learn guide to do

it whether it's you know using a remote or stop-motion or creating GIFs and I

just think that thing is is cool and I can't wait to get my hands on one. The

second one that comes to mind is is USB host you know that combined with support

with the new bigger RGB dot-clock displays makes me wonder and and Scott

Shawcroft actually mentioned this in his Circuit Python 2024 blog post how close

are we to a little mini Circuit Python powered computer right when you have a

computer or a keyboard with the display it can't be that far away now I know

that USB host only works on the IMX and the RP 2040 chipsets right now in those

dot-clock displays work on the S3 so there's gonna have to be some work done

probably to get to that point but it that's one of the things that I think

I'm really excited for in the future yeah we're really close to something that

is very much like the old Sinclair zx81 or the timex one you had where where

it's just this little box and it and you just turned it on and you've got a full

little language based computer you can type programs into without any like

worrying about is it on the net is it is it running OS all this kind of stuff is

just all it does is the language it does basic in the case of the zx81 or it does

Circuit Python in the case of this hopeful new thing we could make in a

year or so it's exactly yeah the the camera the the memento camera is pretty

great because it takes a bunch of stuff that's been here and there like there's

been a camera you can hook up to an ESP 32 for a while and there's been like you

know SD card support for a while and all this other sort of stuff you know

screens of course and now it's a whole thing it's like it's got the camera the

screen a little microphone a little speaker SD card Wi-Fi and oh yeah and

you can access all of this via Circuit Python and make it do things that a

camera can do right and it just works yeah yeah so it'll be interesting it's

it's um one of the one of the things that I think people need to realize

about Circuit Python that has taken me a while is um it's sort of like Legos

where you can you've if you've got the pieces available to you you can snick

them together to form new things but if you don't have the right Lego piece you

can't do stuff like and so like for a while like for the longest time there

wasn't camera like the camera Lego piece and Circuit Python didn't exist but now

it does and so I think it's pretty cool that we're getting more and more of

these cool little Lego pieces that we can do stuff with oh I agree it is so

cool to watch the development happen in real time so so we got all these new

things that are that are definitely coming up what are some of the things

you want to see Circuit Python do in the future you know one of the things I'd

like to see is more options for Bluetooth so we've got that an RF boards

that that are out there and with Circuit Python 9 they've updated the expressive

IDF the IOT development framework and I know or I believe that there are still

some changes upstream in the nimble library that need to happen before

Circuit Python can take advantage of Bluetooth on an s3 chip but I think

it'll be you know considering all the different places we're seeing these s3

chips now right the qualia boards yeah the memento camera everything we just

talked about adding Bluetooth it just seems to be the next step and that's one

thing I would personally like to see yeah yeah definitely the these ESP 32 s3

chips are so powerful with their like they've got dual core I think and

they've got Wi-Fi and they've got Bluetooth but yeah getting the Bluetooth

stuff has been not quite working on Circuit Python and I think there's even

been a problems with it and when you're writing programs in C and stuff and so I

can't wait for that because it's pretty cool to have your have a little Bluetooth

gizmo that talks to your phone or whatever and so you can pull off you can

get cool notifications from your phone you can like control your phone in

various ways you know have it be a MIDI device or audio device or something

right yeah this isn't the end of the show yet but I wanted to also thank you

for the last what two years of doing the Circuit Python show I think it was a

very critical tool to help get people to learn about Circuit Python and get

people who are doing some of the Circuit Python stuff kind of get them out there

into the world so thank you very much oh you're welcome it's been my pleasure

that you know the developers and hackers and makers that I've gotten to talk to

it's been so cool getting to know all these people and seeing all the cool

projects that are done you know it's it's sad in a way that the show is

coming to an end but I think it's time but yeah the last two years have just

been wonderful and being able to meet everyone especially a good a good thing

to let us do instead of worrying about the pandemic for the last couple years

exactly and that's one of you know one of the reasons why I started it is I was

looking for a hobby in addition to you know Circuit Python and Python and just

coding and it was a great learning experience and how to cut up audio and

audio production and all that kind of fun stuff I've learned a ton totally

yeah these are your two standard questions you have at the end of end of

the the podcast if anyone wants to learn more about you and your work where

should they go they can visit my home page at Paul Cutler org I have a blog

there that I infrequently update like most people these days but I also have a

projects page that lists all the different projects I've worked on over

the last couple years with screenshots and links to the github repos and all

that kind of fun stuff that would be the place to go yeah I should do that that's

a good idea and lastly so you're going to start a new Circuit Python project

what board are you reaching for just to first start prototyping or building with

I'm gonna go with the one that we've been talking about so much well as the

same one that Jeff Epler picked in the last episode which is a QDPI s3 with two

megs of PS RAM I don't typically need a lot of GP GP IO so the QDPI s are

perfect for me with that small little footprint and like we were just talking

about the s3 is such a powerful chip and I've really really enjoyed working with

Wi-Fi a number of my projects use Wi-Fi whether it's downloading images or

controlling my home theater receiver remotely I love built-in Wi-Fi on those

chips yeah yeah I'm a big fan of the ESP 32 s3 chips also not even

not even when using them for Wi-Fi like I've used a ton of them for non

internet projects because their little processor in them is so fast they can do

a lot of mathy type operations if you're doing like synthesizers or stuff so yeah

big big fan of that chip as well Paul thanks so much for being on the show and

hosting the other shows and creating the circuit Python show transcripts are

available in most podcast players and show notes are available at www.circuit

python show calm thanks for listening and stay positive

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