Letters

REGULAR

ATTENTION ALL MAKERS!

If you have something you’d like to get off your chest (or even throw a word of praise in our direction) let us know at hsmag.cc/hello

MORE PICO PLEASE

Right, I’ve got my Pico, got MicroPython installed, built the traffic lights, attached a buzzer, and I’ve got a shopping list of add-ons ready for when payday comes. What now?

Rachel

Colchester

Ben says: What now? Why, turn to page 38 of course – we’ve been absolutely hammering our Pico, especially with the PIO features that make it so powerful.

YOU MADE A TIME MACHINE?

I really must take issue with your Letters page, issue 39. The letter in question mentions a DeLorean, while the image clearly shows the car from Ghostbusters. This is a fail. But on the other hand, it did lead me to stumble across a documentary on John DeLorean and his dodgy dealing on the BBC the other week. So a fail, but a productive fail.

Paul

Worcester

Ben says: I literally have no idea how this happened, but I really don’t mind – Ghostbusters is the best film ever, after The Expendables 2, so we’ll take any excuse to talk about it.

SPARK

CHEERS FOR THE PICO!

I wasn’t looking for a cheap, dual-core microcontroller, but now that I’ve got one I’m not giving it back! I’ve no idea how you are able to give away something so useful, so cheaply, but I’m not going to complain. Having to learn C was always a barrier to entry to learning Arduino, so I’m pleased that there’s now a cheap way to show my nieces how to make things flash and beep with Python instead.

Huw Jones

Telford

Ben says: As I recall from business studies lessons, the cheaper things are, the more you have to sell to make the same amount of money. Based on the fact that I think the plan for the Pico is to sell scullions of them, which suits me: as you say, controlling hardware on Python is so, so much easier than doing it with C. Let a thousand embedded engineer flowers bloom!

HOT AIR

Last issue, you got hold of a hot air reflow station for melting solder paste. It looked a bit like a hair-dryer, but with a dial to control the temperature of the air. I’ve never used one of these things before – in fact, I’ve never used surface mounted components at all. Is there any chance of you publishing a guide to help me get started?

Suraj Chennai

Ben says: Sticking part x to part y is the easy part – we prefer to link a skill to a project, so we’ve got a few parts on order that’ll be used to demonstrate a few surface mount soldering techniques. So in short, yes, but we don’t know how long they’ll be stuck at customs.