March 6, 2025

Today, I’m learning a bit about how to plan for and design hardware projects. I am going through some tutorials on how to use the Fritzing software to design breadboards and schematics. A few notes:

• Not all parts will be available in the software, but the community may have designed fritzing files for the parts I need. For example, Raspberry Pi has Fritzing designs for all its parts, so I was able to google for the fritizng part and download it. From there, it can just be imported into the software for use.
• I designed a breadboard design for the Simon Says game so it will be easier to reproduce in the future!
• I also researched how to use VS Code as my main driver for these Rasbperry Pi projects, because using the thonny editor has been giving me a bit of a hard time. I found the official Raspberry Pi Pico VS Code extension which seems amazing. This has hooks to be able to connect directly to the Pico and run the code from the editor, so I don’t need to fight with Thonny anymore! Main thing of note: Seems like project folders need a .micropico file to signal that they are indeed pico projects, and that should hook up all the thing that are needed to trigger the extension to start.
• This might be a helpful reference for future projects, but it was a bit overkill for my immediate needs which was just “how do I get this extension to run code on the device”. Lots of details about how to use the extension including the debugging interface, which I’m sure I’ll need at some point. :)

Other things from today:

• Learned about pyodide, a web assembly solution for python. Got to pair on debugging a problem with it running in iOS Safari (the solution was to downgrade versions 😅).
• Learned about MicroCenter for hardware supplies. Definitely want to go there on a field trip!
• Kept hearing about Supabase for a cloud Postgres implementation, super interesting!