Seeed Studio's Wio Terminal Gets Official CircuitPython Support
Available in source now and as a pre-built firmware soon, CircuitPython support for the Wio Terminal is here at last.
Seeed Studio has announced that its Wio Terminal, an all-in-one microcontroller development kit which includes sensors, buttons, Grove connectors, and a screen, is now an officially-supported CircuitPython device.
Unveiled earlier this year, the Wio Terminal — the latest entry in the company's Wireless Inout/Output (Wio) family of devices — is an interesting hybrid. Designed primarily with standalone use in mind, the device is powered by a Microchip ATSAMD51P19 SoC running at up to 200MHz alongside 192kB of RAM, 4MB of flash memory, and a Realtek RTL7270DN Wi-Fi and Bluetooth module for connectivity.
These are held in a plastic housing behind a colour display with user-definable buttons, a joystick, and both USB Type-C and Grove connections for additional hardware — while a 40-pin general-purpose input/output (GPIO) header on the rear can be used to connect the Wio Terminal to selected Raspberry Pi HATs or to use the Wio Terminal as a HAT on the Raspberry Pi itself.
While the board launched with Arduino IDE and Platform.io support, Seeed Studio has now announced another string to the Wio Terminal's bow: official support for CircuitPython.
While the firmware download to switch the Wio Terminal to CircuitPython mode not yet available at the time of writing, with Seeed Studio saying it will appear on the official website soon, the company promises the process will be quick and easy. Just download the new firmware, switch the Wio Terminal into bootloader mode, and drag-and-drop the firmware via USB.
The Wio Terminal should appear on the CircuitPython download page in due course; for the impatient willing to build it from source, the firmware is available on the CircuitPython GitHub repository.