Hi, there’s a number of SparkFun products that are delivered with Arduino support libraries.
As an example, I recently purchased the SparkFun Qwiic ToF Imager - VL53L5CX, which is a very interesting product. I thought I’d have a go at porting the Arduino library to Python but so far I’ve not been able to get it running.
While the world of Arduino is large, so is the world of Python. I was wondering if the SparkFun staff might consider providing Python libaries for some of their more advance, “interesting” boards. I understand that developer resources are finite but you’d be opening up new markets for your products. I’d love to be able to use the VL53L5CX, which at this point is sitting idle on my shelf…
Thanks for your consideration.
Thanks for the input! You covered most of it; developer resources are in short-supply, and as a company we tend to focus on producing new products while providing 1 or more examples in arduino/C, as it is most widely-used
Be sure to circle back and share your python project if you get it going!
Yes, understood, but why Arduino as the preference (which is really the essence of my question)?
Surely the SBC/Raspberry Pi/CPython and MCU/MicroPython/CircuitPython markets must for many of these more advanced sensors be a significant and even larger market than Arduino? For myself, I wouldn’t consider an Arduino anymore simply because there are much more powerful SBCs/MCUs available for the same money (or cheaper). For my robotics work Python makes a lot more sense. It just feels like to a great degree (and I know certain people would disagree) the Arduino is of the past. A 16MHz MCU seems very old school in 2022.
I’d probably buy more SparkFun products if they reflected the Python market. E.g., the SparkFun Qwiic MP3 Trigger is another product I would consider but I’m not going to go to the trouble of attempting to port every SparkFun Arduino library to Python for every product I buy. I’d just buy something else that had a Python support library. As things stand right now, my SparkFun Qwiic ToF Imager - VL53L5CX is likely to never get used as I will likely never manage to port its library.
I guess I’m just asking that SparkFun consider that the Python market is quite a large market too. I don’t have any metrics but you’d potentially add Raspberry Pi and all the MicroPython/CircuitPython MCU users to those buying your products.
I found a Micro Python module for this sensor so would that be a start for a Python3 module? I have a Raspberry P robot project working with a video stream to a web page that also gives speed, direction and pan-n-tilt. But I also have a data page that at this time is empty. This is a Python project so a module for this sensor would be great.
Dale