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Comment by ForHackernews | Hacker News Reader

This is pretty cool. Could it run on something like an Arduino?

If you're talking about the traditional 8-bit AVR Arduinos, the answer is almost certainly no. The AVR boards like the ATmega328 (on the Uno) only have a few kbyte of RAM available. But MicroPython apparently can run on some pretty tiny and inexpensive boards: namely the Arm Cortex microcontrollers.

They are a bit more expensive than the chip in the Arduino, but well under $20 per chip. You can buy very nice evaluation Cortex boards for ~$10 from ST and Freescale[1,2].

Incidentally, Arduino now makes a board that uses the Arm Cortex chip: the Arduino Due[3]. I believe it's around $30.

1. http://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-46626/l/element1...

2. http://www.st.com/web/catalog/tools/FM116/SC959/SS1532/PF252...

3. http://arduino.cc/en/Main/arduinoBoardDue

It appears from [0] that the chip of choice is the STM32F045RGT (datasheet [1]). This is from the Cortex M4f series, which includes such wonderful things as a hardware floating-point unit. That is wonderful news, although, this board appears to have no external memory, so it would be limited to 128kB.

[0] https://raw.githubusercontent.com/micropython/pyboard/master... [1] http://www.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/pdf/510587/STMICRO...

You can get versions with external memory.

It runs on the micropython board: http://micropython.org

Besides the Arduino Due and Freescale dev boards mentioned, you could probably get the TI LaunchPad Tiva C Series to run Micro Python. TI sells the low cost model for 13 USD.

http://www.ti.com/ww/en/launchpad/launchpads-connected.html

from the kickstarter page:

Pledge £1,000 or more

Micro Python will be ported to run on a microcontroller of your choice. The microcontroller must have the capabilities, and you are responsible for set-up costs for the development board and/or software.

I think the cheapest chips it runs on cost $3 in 1K volume.

Do you have a part # or reference?

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