What Exactly is Zerynth?

DesignSpark, as you should know by now, is the champion of free-to-use design software, be that DesignSpark Mechanical for your 3D CAD needs, DesignSpark PCB, for those tricky circuit board designs or our electrical circuit design software DesignSpark Electrical, and more besides.

Building on that reputation DesignSpark has teamed up with Zerynth.com to bring you the rapid way to get your Python programmed microcontrollers connected to the IoT cloud quick-smart. Zerynth IS the middleware for the IoT and industry 4.0, available to download via DesignSpark.

What Exactly is Zerynth?

Well, just what is Zerynth?  Well, essentially, Zerynth provides developers with easy to use ecosystem of software tools that they can use to program microcontrollers using Python and then connect them to the Cloud. With Zerynth you can easily program using Python or a hybrid C/Python language that is supported on many popular 32-bit microcontrollers, and once programmed you can then connect those devices to the cloud.

If you like open source you will like Zerynth, a powerful, easy to use and a straightforward way to conceive and design innovative devices and applications using 32-bit microcontrollers (e.g. ESP32, ESP8266, ARM Cortex M0+, ARM Cortex M3, ARM Cortex M4), when combined with multiple sensors and actuators as well as the multitude of expansion boards currently available in the marketplace and from vendors like RS Components.

Created to enable rapid and successful prototyping with leading-edge development boards and sensory components that you can rapidly transform into your final designs quickly and easily. Zerynth also contains a comprehensive compendium of programming examples and reference designs suitable for many applications. All of these additions are guaranteed to help you, the designer take your designs from prototype to final product with the minimal amount of effort.

Zerynth is ultimately a solution for designers and IoT professionals who need to concentrate their efforts on project design and ideas without worrying about non-value added components such as low-level programming of particular micro-controller boards, device drivers and so on.

A real-time operating system is integrated within Zerynth which allows you the creator to use all the features of embedded hardware if you need to.

Zerynth was designed for use with many of the most common prototyping boards you can find today, such as the Arduino DUE & Zero, Pycom WiPy & FiPy, Wemos D1 mini, Particle Photon & Electron and also on professional hardware based around the ARM micro-controllers series. In a nutshell, Zerynth comprises of a set of open source tools developed from scratch in order to allow you to approach and interact with the embedded world in a few short clicks.

Main Features:

• Python and C can be combined for quick and easy development
• Small Footprint: Requires just 60k-80kB of Flash and 3-5kB of RAM
• Real-Time: Integrates the RTOS of your choice with multithreading support
• Connectivity: Easy integration with top Cloud services with Firmware Over-The-Air updates

The Zerynth Ecosystem

Virtual Machine: A multithreaded real-time OS that facilitates real hardware independence allowing you to reuse code on a wide set of 32bit microprocessors. The Virtual Machine is there to support the high-level features of Python, such as multi-threading, modules, classes, call back, timers and exceptions. The Virtual Machine also allows you to use custom hardware-related features like interrupts, PWM and digital I/O. Real-Time Operating System threads written in C can exist in parallel the VM allowing for a mixed C/Python real-time environment.

Studio: A cross-platform, powerful Integrated Development Environment and a Toolchain for developing Python or hybrid C/Python applications. The Studio also includes a compiler, debugger and an editor, and used alongside the tutorials and example projects makes for an easy learning experience.

Available to download for Mac OS X, Linux 64-bit and Windows 64-bit systems.

Click here to download and install Zerynth on your device.