This is the lightest of lightweight comparison of Vim 9 and Neovim stable release 0.9.5 running under Ubuntu 23.10 on a Raspberry Pi 5.

Vim 9 is the regular package installation bundled with Ubuntu 23.10, while Neovim was built from source. Neovim was built from source because the latest neovim version available was 0.7.2 (via apt show neovim); if you’ve been following Neovim then you will know how much has changed since stable release 0.8, so that makes 0.7.2 pretty much a non-starter.

Vim 9 is running with the Afterglow color scheme and PowerLine for the status line layout at the bottom. I’ve written about this already. The code common to both examples is a simple command-line utility I wrote in Rust, which is also installed on this Raspberry Pi. I’ve been a vi user since at least the early days when I was exposed to BSD Unix via DEC Ultrix running on a MicroVAX, back around 1985. Once exposed I stuck with it because anything else back then for editing source code was horrific to use by comparison. Of course there was no coloration back then. If you wanted color you either used a white, green, or orange monitor. Your choice.

I should note that VIM 9.1 was released on 2 January 2024, but the way distributions are managed you won’t see it in the regular distributions unless you, the user, take extraordinary actions, such as using an alternative repo, use Flatpack or Appimage, or build from source. Because the Raspberry Pi 5 is ARM based, there is no Flatpack or Appimage except for x86_64. As for Snaps, well, nothing there for this platform, and if there were I wouldn’t touch it. Vim 9 is sufficiently stable that it’s good enough as is.

I found the color scheme Afterglow to be easy on the eyes and quite helpful reading and writing source code. Where-ever I use Vim, I have Afterglow installed side-by-side.

I built Neovim because I wanted to give it a try on the Raspberry Pi. There are instructions to install from source on the Neovim website. They’re quite clear and it took very little time to build my copy and install it for use.  To make it easier on me I executed the following:

make CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/pi/tools/neovim-0.9.5/

There are instructions in the Neovim documentation that illustrate almost the same command sequence. I’ve reached a point where I have a ~/tools folder in my home folder to install whatever, so that I don’t have to use sudo to make it all available. Yes, I have to add a bit extra to my $PATH, but the little extra effort makes my regular environment much cleaner as a consequence, especially if I want to clean it all out later.

After building and installing my local neovim binary, I installed the AstroNvim Neovim configuration. And one other piece to install: I had to download and fully install all the Hack Nerd fonts from GitHub (see link below). I downloaded Hack.zip, unzipped everything, then copied all the Hack font files into ~/.local/share/font, logged out and then back in again to pick up all the fonts. If you don’t download the full set then you wind up with oddball square glyphs instead of the special characters that Neovim and AstroNvim use.

Then I started nvim and got to work.

I particularly like the way that Neovim plus AstroNvim works, creating a quite powerful IDE-like environment. In the example above I’ve used the predefined key sequence [SPACE] e to open a file view column to the left. I can use either the arrow keys plus the space bar to select any item, or I can click with the mouse. It can handle multiple open and tabbed files to the right, and it still has the complete vi key sequence to work with.

I believe that regular Vim, especially versions 9 and later, is a perfectly decent vi clone. But given the choice between vim and neovim, I’ve started to install and use neovim over vim.

Links

Vim Home — https://www.vim.org/

Vim Afterglow color scheme — https://vimcolorschemes.com/danilo-augusto/vim-afterglow/

Neovim Home — https://neovim.io/

AstroNvim — https://github.com/AstroNvim/AstroNvim

Nerd Fonts (just download Hack.zip) — https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/releases

…

Once upon a time, say back around 2016 or so, I purchased a monstrous (for the time) 6 TiB drive called the Seagate Backup Plus Hub Drive. I don’t recall how much I spent, but I’m pretty sure I purchased it from my local Costco, a brand they sold for many years until recently. I’m sure it was on sale at the time, being the cheap person I am. I used it for a few years, at least up until 2019, when I stopped using it and put it away in one of my cabinets. I can’t recall why I stopped using it, but it sat unused for about the next five years until today.

In the last post I wrote about backing up my iPhone 11. That’s all well and good, but until today I didn’t have a backup drive for this newest MacBook Pro. I’d tried to purchase another 5 TiB Seagate Backup Plus Portable from Costco, but the warehouse no longer carries them. When they did I could purchase them for $99, which isn’t bad at all. I have four of them already, for each of my various Macs. Looking online at both Amazon and Walmart, I can purchase a new one for about $160. When I saw the cost of those my memory was jogged a bit and I went and pulled out this now-old Seagate Backup.

The first thing I did was plug it into my MacBook, and sure enough it mounted and I was able to at least read the drive contents. The drive had come preformated as NTFS, because at the time I was still using my 17.2″ Samsung notebook computer and that backup drive’s primary use was meant for Windows 10 Pro. I used it for that purpose a number of times, but around late 2019 I began a hard switch to Linux and, of course, macOS. That switch is the reason why I pulled the Windows 10 SSD out of the Samsung and put in a fresh blank SSD, and then installed Linux Mint on it. Except for a Parallels VM with Windows 11 installed, I don’t run Windows on any of my personal systems any more.

Once the Seagate was plugged in and mounted, I attempted to reformat the drive as APFS with case sensitivity. Long story short, that’s the file system you should format on any drive meant for any contemporary Mac. I’ve read enough older junk on the web saying Apple created this so it would run efficiently on an SSD, and that may have been true to start with, but any version of macOS that came after 2014 used this, so I might as well get with the program.

The only problem was I decided to select the option where the entire drive would be scrubbed with binary zeroes, with a total of seven passes. I chose poorly. After waiting nearly four hours, the first pass had barely started. I killed the Disk Utility process, then proceeded to reboot my Mac because the act of killing Disk Utility made working with the Seagate null and void. Once the Mac was rebooted, I restarted the Disk Utility and allowed it to sanely format the drive, which it promptly performed in less than a minute.

So now the Seagate’s attached and Time Machine has performed it’s first full backup of this Mac; about 140 GiB in about 20 minutes. That Mac backup includes my iPhone backup to the Mac, so now I’m (I hope, fingers crossed) doubly backed up.

By the way, the name of the backup drive is named BACKUP6T (for terabyte). I don’t expect anything terrible to happen with this older backup drive. You can still purchase them with capacities up to 14 TiB. I also need to read one more time what the two USB A ports are used for. According to the flashy documentation I can use those front ports to backup “your files, precious photos and videos while connecting to and recharging your tablet, smartphone or camera.” I can certainly appreciate backing up my iPhone, but since I’ve never done that kind of backup before it will be another adventure!

Links

Seagate Backup Plus Hub Drive — https://www.seagate.com/products/external-hard-drives/backup-plus-hub/

The two new accounts, one on Bluesky and the other on Mastodon, have proven to be every bit as good as advertised. I really like the web interfaces on both.

The Bluesky web interface is just fine, I just find it odd that it looks for the most part like the mobile interface, with the left and right side panels hidden but available as a single click on the app. The dog’s name, by the way, is Charlie and she’s a she.

The Mastodon web page is a lot more complicated with four vertical columns. Again, you can see the same thing on the mobile app with simple touches on the main view, which on the web page is the second column from the left. It’s not a problem for me at all. What’s interesting with Mastodon is that you can have validated web locations, which in my case is this website and my GitHub location.

One key feature of both social platforms is the lack of an “engagement algorithm.” I don’t get anything I haven’t signed up for, and if I don’t like some replies to the accounts I do follow, it’s simple to just mute those replies (and the repliers) and not be bothered from there on out.

I’m planning to keep these accounts indefinitely. I can’t remember the last time before I joined Bluesky and Mastodon where I enjoyed being on social media as much as I enjoy being on these two platforms.

Links

it’s time for me to move away from social media

If it’s not obvious by now I’m sticking with Ubuntu 23.10 on my RPi 5 SBCs, so I won’t be including it in the post title anymore. In this report I add additional functionality as well as clean up the code. The simple circuit now has a push button that connects pin GPIO3 to ground when it’s pressed. This will trigger a button closure event that is monitored and used by the gpiozero Button instance in the Python script.

#!/usr/bin/env pythonfrom gpiozero import LED, Buttonfrom time import sleepfrom datetime import datetimefrom signal import signal, SIGINT, pausefrom sys import exitimport asyncioleds = [LED(22), LED(23), LED(24), LED(25)]button = Button(3)def sigint_handler(signal_received, frame):for led in leds:led.off()print()exit(0)signal(SIGINT, sigint_handler)def flash_leds():while button.is_pressed:for led in leds:led.on()sleep(.04)led.off()sleep(1)for led in reversed(leds):led.on()sleep(.05)led.off()sleep(1)def print_when_pressed():print(f"{datetime.now()}: Button pressed")flash_leds()def print_when_released():print(f"{datetime.now()}: Button released")for led in leds:led.off()button.when_pressed = print_when_pressedbutton.when_released = print_when_releasedpause()

The Python code used to flash the four LEDs in the circuit was cleaned up a bit by creating an array of the LEDs, and then the flash_leds function tightened up using for loop iterators as well as Python’s built-in reverse function, so that the lights flash in one direction, pause, then flash in the reverse direction. Finally, instead of a blind test for true, we check to see if the button is pressed and then flash if it is.

To make the code a bit more interesting the button was given a pair of callback functions to work with, one to print out when the button is pressed, and one when it’s released. This is a demonstration of the capability, nothing more. I put in in because I’ve seen the question asked about how to use this functionality on various fora. If you read the documentation (see the link below) it’s very simple, but none-the-less, here’s what I did after reading the fine manual online. For a lot of tasks, gpiozero Just Works. The fact that it works under Ubuntu 23.10 on the Raspberry Pi is the primary reason I’m sticking with Ubuntu on the Raspberry Pi.

Links

Latest gpiozero documentation — https://gpiozero.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html

report #3 on using ubuntu 23.10 with a raspberry pi 5 — blinkin’ lights

I continue with my look backward into my photo collection of Labrador Retriever photographs. These photos go back to late 2008 to early 2009. This is when Ruby Tuesday (Ruby) was still just a little female, while her older companion, Peter Max (Max) was the alpha of the house. At that time we “only” had three cats.

There is a sweet period when a younger dog is brought in as a companion with an older that they both stick together like two peas in a pod. The eat together, they sleep together (see above) and then explore the world together (below). They even travel together as was illustrated in last Saturday’s Labraday entry.

I’m especially drawn to the photo above, because of the serious look on little Ruby’s face, and the way that they’re both looking as if they’re checking the property and covering each other’s backs. Max left us nearly nine years ago, and Ruby, who had her fifteenth birthday last August, is now as big as Max, but still chuggin’ along. Although you can’t actually tell in that photo, Max is of American Lab stock while Ruby is English.

All of these photos were taken during my Olympus E-300 camera period. That was the only camera I owned at the time, a kit system that I purchased from NewEgg in 2006 that included a 14-45mm and 40-150mm Digital Zuiko zooms. Those were the original models, before Olympus started to redesign them to reduce material in the zooms, and the cost to manufacture for them. All of that is gone now, but I still fondly remember them.

And it should go without saying I really miss Max.

Links

labraday

When I start to develop an embedded system, I always try to construct a test layout or mockup of what I envision the final product will be. A test system can embody an important subset of requirements, and I can begin to write code for that final system. I can develop a lot more quickly with a mockup, and I can use the mockup to help debug issues during the phase where a more representative version of the end product arrives and I start to work with it. This is a simple mockup constructed of six switches and an Adafruit ESP32-S3 Feather running CircuitPython (code is listed further down). What I was developing with the mockup was the ability to read switch closures and to use the ESP32-S3’s WiFi radio to send switch status changes (open and close) to a central Linux system via a UCP socket.

I’m providing the official ESP32-S3 Feather pinout diagram from Adafruit because the generic part provided by KiCad is too generic and too old. The specific pin numbers are correct, but not much else.

## Adafruit ESP32-S3 Feather with 4MB Flash 2MB PSRAM - STEMMA QT / Qwiic# https://www.adafruit.com/product/5477#import boardimport osimport gcimport binasciiimport microcontroller as miimport wifiimport socketpoolimport crc## Show ESP32-S3 Feather basic resource usage.#PLATFORM = ', '.join(os.uname())NAME = os.uname()[0]UNIQUE_ID = binascii.hexlify(mi.cpu.uid).decode('ascii').upper()SSID = NAME + '-' + UNIQUE_ID[-4:]print(f"PLATFORM: {PLATFORM}")print(f"FREE MEM: {gc.mem_free():,} BYTES")stat_vfs = os.statvfs('/')fs_total = stat_vfs[0] * stat_vfs[2]fs_free  = stat_vfs[0] * stat_vfs[3]print(f"FS TOTAL: {fs_total:,} BYTES")print(f"FS  FREE: {fs_free:,} BYTES")print(f" UID: {UNIQUE_ID}")print(f"SSID: {SSID}")print(f"FREQ: {mi.cpu.frequency:,} Hz")print(f"FREE MEM: {gc.mem_free():,} BYTES")# Scan for WiFi networks. Sort list on RSSI strength.#print("\nWIFI: SCAN, SORTED BY RSSI")networks = []for network in wifi.radio.start_scanning_networks():networks.append(network)wifi.radio.stop_scanning_networks()networks = sorted(networks, key=lambda net: net.rssi, reverse=True)for network in networks:print(f"SSID: {network.ssid:<24}- RSSI: {network.rssi}")gc.collect()print(f"FREE MEM: {gc.mem_free():,} BYTES")import timeimport boardimport neopixelnp = neopixel.NeoPixel(board.NEOPIXEL, 1)# Cycle through five NeoPixel colors, then# turn off the NeoPixel#neopixel_colors = [(64, 0, 0),  # red(0, 64, 0),  # green(0, 0, 64),  # blue(64, 32, 0), # orange(0, 64, 64), # cyan(0, 0, 0)# black]def cycle_colors():for color in neopixel_colors:np.fill(color)np.write()time.sleep(0.4)np.fill(neopixel_colors[-1])np.write()print("NEOPIXEL: TESTING")cycle_colors()gc.collect()print(f"FREE MEM: {gc.mem_free():,} BYTES")import boardimport digitalio## Configure digital input triggers.#input_1 = digitalio.DigitalInOut(board.D10)input_1.switch_to_input(pull=digitalio.Pull.DOWN)input_2 = digitalio.DigitalInOut(board.D11)input_2.switch_to_input(pull=digitalio.Pull.DOWN)input_3 = digitalio.DigitalInOut(board.D12)input_3.switch_to_input(pull=digitalio.Pull.DOWN)input_4 = digitalio.DigitalInOut(board.D13)input_4.switch_to_input(pull=digitalio.Pull.DOWN)input_5 = digitalio.DigitalInOut(board.D9)input_5.switch_to_input(pull=digitalio.Pull.DOWN)input_6 = digitalio.DigitalInOut(board.D6)input_6.switch_to_input(pull=digitalio.Pull.DOWN)import ipaddressfrom adafruit_httpserver.server import HTTPServerfrom adafruit_httpserver.response import HTTPResponseudp_host = Noneudp_port = Nonetry:print("WIFI: CONNECT IN PROGRESS TO", os.getenv("AP_SSID"))wifi.radio.hostname = SSIDif os.getenv("ADDRESS") is not None:ipv4 = ipaddress.IPv4Address(os.getenv("ADDRESS"))netmask = ipaddress.IPv4Address(os.getenv("NETMASK"))gateway = ipaddress.IPv4Address(os.getenv("GATEWAY"))wifi.radio.set_ipv4_address(ipv4=ipv4, netmask=netmask, gateway=gateway)print("WIFI: STATIC ADDRESS USED")wifi.radio.connect(os.getenv("AP_SSID"), os.getenv("AP_PASSWORD"))print("WIFI: SUCCESSFUL CONNECT")print(" IP ADDR:", wifi.radio.ipv4_address)print(" IP GWAY:", wifi.radio.ipv4_gateway)print(" IP SNET:", wifi.radio.ipv4_subnet)print("HOSTNAME:", wifi.radio.hostname)## Set up a UDP socket for sending out messages.#pool = socketpool.SocketPool(wifi.radio)udp_host = str(os.getenv("UDP_HOST"))udp_port = int(os.getenv("UDP_PORT"))sock = pool.socket(pool.AF_INET, pool.SOCK_DGRAM)print("WIFI: UDP SOCKET CREATED")if os.getenv("PING_TEST") is not None:ping_test_addr = os.getenv("PING_TEST")ping_test = ipaddress.ip_address(ping_test_addr)for i in range(5):print("WIFI: PING TEST",ping_test_addr,"-",(wifi.radio.ping(ping_test)*1000),"MS")time.sleep(1)except Exception as e:print("WIFI: FAILURE")print("WIFI: REASON:", e)delay = float(os.getenv("DELAY"))print("   DELAY:", delay, "seconds")print("  ACTION: WAITING FOR DIGITAL EVENTS")i1flag = Falsei2flag = Falsei3flag = Falsei4flag = Falsei5flag = Falsei6flag = Falseindicator_counter = 0max_count = int(os.getenv("MAX_COUNT"))## Use an ordered dictionary so we can have# an ordered readable JSON message.#import jsonfrom collections import OrderedDictjson_template = OrderedDict([("IO",OrderedDict([("ID", SSID), ("S1", False),("S2", False), ("S3", False), ("S4", False),("S5", False), ("S6", False)]))])print("JSON MSG:", json.dumps(json_template))print(" UDP:", udp_host, udp_port)def send_udp_message(name, value):json_template["IO"][name] = valueudp_message = bytearray(json.dumps(json_template), 'utf-8')sock.sendto(bytes(udp_message), (udp_host, udp_port))while True:if indicator_counter > max_count:indicator_counter = 0np.fill(neopixel_colors[1])np.write()else:indicator_counter += 1np.fill(neopixel_colors[-1])np.write()if input_1.value and not i1flag:send_udp_message("S1", True);i1flag = Trueelif not input_1.value and i1flag:send_udp_message("S1", False);i1flag = Falseif input_2.value and not i2flag:send_udp_message("S2", True)i2flag = Trueelif not input_2.value and i2flag:send_udp_message("S2", False)i2flag = Falseif input_3.value and not i3flag:send_udp_message("S3", True)i3flag = Trueelif not input_3.value and i3flag:send_udp_message("S3", False)i3flag = Falseif input_4.value and not i4flag:send_udp_message("S4", True)i4flag = Trueelif not input_4.value and i4flag:send_udp_message("S4", False)i4flag = Falseif input_5.value and not i5flag:send_udp_message("S5", True)i5flag = Trueelif not input_5.value and i5flag:send_udp_message("S5", False)i5flag = Falseif input_6.value and not i6flag:send_udp_message("S6", True)i6flag = Trueelif not input_6.value and i6flag:send_udp_message("S6", False)i6flag = Falsetime.sleep(delay)

The code is rather long, with a lot of debugging information that is displayed on a monitoring terminal. I don’t normally turn all that off because these devices aren’t attached to a terminal during regular operation. If anything, the power is supplied via the Feather’s battery input with something more sophisticated than a bare battery.

The interesting code starts at line 151, where we set up the JSON dictionary structure, than at line 175 where we stay in a loop polling for switch state changes. The only event that needed alerting was if the switch was open and then it closed, or if closed and then opened. I wasn’t required to note momentary closures. I got away with push buttons on my mockup because it was what I had at hand, and a second or so on the push button was more than adequate for testing. Out in the field the switches were more like toggle switches.

Here’s what it looks like when it runs. I’m using Thonny’s terminal to capture the output;

PLATFORM: ESP32S3, ESP32S3, 8.2.9, 8.2.9 on 2023-12-06, Adafruit Feather ESP32S3 4MB Flash 2MB PSRAM with ESP32S3FREE MEM: 2,036,384 BYTESFS TOTAL: 2,404,352 BYTESFS  FREE: 2,352,128 BYTES UID: 4F21AF95CC4DSSID: ESP32S3-CC4DFREQ: 240,000,000 HzFREE MEM: 2,035,984 BYTESWIFI: SCAN, SORTED BY RSSISSID: GuestNetwork- RSSI: -47SSID: g00gleeeyes - RSSI: -48SSID: ESP32S3-4EF0- RSSI: -48SSID: DIRECT-FF-HP OfficeJet Pro 9020- RSSI: -55SSID: SmartLife-EEFB  - RSSI: -76SSID: asus 2.4- RSSI: -84SSID: Miller guest- RSSI: -85SSID: christian173- RSSI: -85SSID: Dashmeister - RSSI: -85SSID: SpectrumSetup-4A- RSSI: -88SSID: Miller guest- RSSI: -89SSID: christian173- RSSI: -92SSID: NETGEAR80   - RSSI: -93FREE MEM: 2,036,400 BYTESNEOPIXEL: TESTINGFREE MEM: 2,034,272 BYTESWIFI: CONNECT IN PROGRESS TO g00gleeeyesWIFI: SUCCESSFUL CONNECT IP ADDR: 192.168.0.203 IP GWAY: 192.168.0.1 IP SNET: 255.255.255.0HOSTNAME: ESP32S3-CC4DWIFI: UDP SOCKET CREATED   DELAY: 0.3 seconds  ACTION: WAITING FOR DIGITAL EVENTSJSON MSG: {"IO": {"ID": "ESP32S3-CC4D", "S1": false, "S2": false, "S3": false, "S4": false, "S5": false, "S6": false}} UDP: 192.168.0.248 23456

When I write MicroPython code for one of the embedded boards I have boilerplate code that helps identify the board (to make sure) as well as give me a clue to the environment I’m working in. The WiFi scan is my home WiFi environment, which includes neighbors on both sides as well as across the back of my yard. The first four lines are devices in my house. The rest are from locations outside my home. In my neighborhood we live on 1/3 to 1/2 acre plots of land, so it’s always surprising to me to see so many WiFi radios pop up. My close neighbors should be out of range, but it would appear they are not.

Starting at line 27 in the output, the Feather is attempting to connect to my local Linux host. First it joins my local home network via DHCP, it gets an IP address, then it attempts to create a UDP socket, which it does. The last line is the UPD IP address and port number it connects to. How do I know what IP address to use? It’s a two step process, starting with determining my Linux host’s IP address, and then editing a TOML file on the Feather.

## Variables AP_SSID and AP_PASSWORD must always be defined# with a valid access point SSID and PASSWORD.## Error from invalid AP_SSID: No network with that ssid# Error from invalid AP_PASSWORD: Unknown failure 15#AP_SSID="SSID"AP_PASSWORD="PASSWORD"## Uncomment the three environmental variables ADDRESS,# GATEWAY, and NETMASK for static IP address resolution.## ADDRESS is the class 5 IP address for the device.# GATEWAY is the IP address for the access point you want to connect to.# NETMASK is for the local device for further subnetting.## If ADDRESS is left commented then DHCP rules will be used.##ADDRESS="192.168.0.128"#GATEWAY="192.168.0.1"#NETMASK="255.255.255.0"## To not execute a ping test, comment out PING_TEST# This ping test is direct to Google# Error from invalid PING_TEST: unsupported types for __mul__: 'NoneType', 'int'##PING_TEST="8.8.4.4"## DELAY is how long to wait between scans of the digital inputs.# DELAY is in decimal floating point seconds.# To delay in milliseconds, use a fraction,# such as 0.3 for 300 milliseconds.## MAX_COUNT is how many DELAYs to wait before toggling the health# NeoPixel LED for a period of one DELAY.#DELAY="0.3"MAX_COUNT="20"## UDP support#UDP_HOST="192.168.0.248"UDP_PORT="23456"

There’s far more commentary than definitions, but that’s OK, especially if you’re going to hand this off to someone else to maintain. Starting with Circuit Python 8.0, Circuit Python will look for the text file settings.toml and automatically read in name/value pairs from it. This is the equivalent to defining environmental variables in a shell environment. This comes in quite handy as it eliminates having important information buried in the code. Before settings.toml the typical solution for constants was to define them in a Circuit Python file (such as secrets.py) and include that. It doesn’t mean you still can’t do that, but settings.toml is a bit cleaner.

On the system side I run this small bit of Python code to receive the Feather’s JSON messages.

#!/usr/bin/env pythonimport signalimport sysimport socketdef sigint_handler(signal, frame):print()sys.exit(0)signal.signal(signal.SIGINT, sigint_handler)# My home environment#hostname = socket.gethostname()ip_addr  = socket.gethostbyname(hostname)print(f" Host {hostname} listening on IP address {ip_addr}")udp_port = 23456sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM) # UDPsock.bind((ip_addr, udp_port))print(f" Waiting for JSON messages on IP address {ip_addr}, port {udp_port}")while True: data, addr = sock.recvfrom(1024) # buffer size is 1024 bytes print(f" JSON message: {str(data, 'utf8')}")

The Python code’s only purpose is to wait for, receive, and then print out what it receives. With test_receive_udp.py running in a terminal, when I go back and toggle switch 1 attached to the Feather closed and then open again, I get the following output;

 Host mint-prime listening on IP address 192.168.0.248 Waiting for JSON messages on IP address 192.168.0.248, port 23456 JSON message: {"IO": {"ID": "ESP32S3-CC4D", "S1": true, "S2": false, "S3": false, "S4": false, "S5": false, "S6": false}} JSON message: {"IO": {"ID": "ESP32S3-CC4D", "S1": false, "S2": false, "S3": false, "S4": false, "S5": false, "S6": false}}

It’s not as sexy as lights flashing, but it still fulfills an import task, which is to transmit a state change in a switch to another system for further processing, whatever I want that processing to be. While this lives on, with necessary changes, in another device out in the wild, I intend to use this to monitor various areas around my house, in particular whether my garage door is open or closed. I can forget to put the door down if I get distracted, especially in the evening. I want to know, without a doubt, the state of the garage door. I can do the same with other areas around the house. Right now my idea is to use one of my encased Raspberry Pi 4’s that I currently have attached, but doing relatively nothing, being the hub for microcontrollers such as this one.

There’s a lot I can do with this design, such as working on automatic bi-directional socket connectivity. That way I could send responses back to the microcontroller and have it execute arbitrary tasks. If this sounds like an alternative to Bluetooth and my MAX7219 displays, it is. It also brings to my mind a lot of different ways to build out remote sensors around my home.

Links

Adafruit ESP32-S3 Feather with 4MB Flash 2MB PSRAM – STEMMA QT / Qwiic — https://www.adafruit.com/product/5477

The great upgrade from Linux Mint v 21.2 to v 21.3 occurred early this morning while I was fixing breakfast. I get up early to open the house, and check on the creatures as well as my machines. I found the notice to upgrade on the Linux Mint Upgrade Manager, so I just kicked it off while I finished my morning chores. So far nothing is amiss, and if you sat me in front of two systems, one running 21.2 and one running 21.3, I wouldn’t be able to tell the two apart unless I cheated (cat /etc/os-release). And that, for me, is a wonderful thing. I’ve grown rather conservative about allowing change in my primary computer platforms. It would appear I’m in good company (in a way);

Just a note that I’m currently bisecting into this merge for a horrendous performance regression.

It makes my empty kernel build go from 22 seconds to 44 seconds, and makes a full kernel build enormously slower too.
…
This is on a 32-core (64-thread) AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X, fwiw.

This from Linus Torvalds. As the author of the Phoronix article notes, Linus is still “rocking” a Ryzen Threadripper system from four-going-on-five years ago, something the author finds surprising. I don’t think it’s surprising at all. After the high cost of moving to new hardware, there’s the equally high cost of time invested in the system to get it work the way you are comfortable with. And finally, you get to know that system and how it’s supposed to work; when something doesn’t work quite right you instinctively know and can start looking for what’s wrong, which Linus did.

Anyway, the update is now on the system and everything works just fine as it did before (so far).

Links

Linux Mint New Features — https://www.linuxmint.com/rel_virginia_whatsnew.php

Linus Torvalds Hits Nasty Performance Regression With Early Linux 6.8 Code — https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.8-Sched-Regression

AMD Threadripper 3970X and 3960X Review: High-End Domination — https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-threadripper-3970x-review

I bring up Ken Thompson’s talk because today I was reminded of why he said he was leaving Apple in that talk. After starting Visual Studio Code on my brand new M1 Max MacBook Pro I attempted to check for VS Code updates and was gobsmacked with the following error dialog:

Look in the lower right corner at the dialog with the red circled ‘X’ about running on a read-only volume. There’s a link to mitigate the issue, but the the statement that “This might mean the application was put on quarantine by macOS” just royally pisses me off. This is the very first time I’ve been hit with the “quarantine application” issue on macOS, but not the first time I’ve run into a show-stopping problem on macOS that shouldn’t have happened.

I followed the link in the message, and based on the post I performed the following to get things straightened out.

sudo chown $USER Library/Caches/com.microsoft.VSCode.ShipItxattr -dr com.apple.quarantine ~/Applications/Visual\ Studio\ Code.app

My VSCode is located locally in my account folder, not under global /Applications. I’m sure that chown isn’t needed, but still it’s good to have around. Once those changes were made, I quite VSCode and restarted it via Launchpad as always, then checked again for updates, and it worked just fine (VSCode was already up to date anyway).

It’s obstacles thrown up like that that make developers like me who actually know how to get work done want to just walk away from Apple. I’m sure Apple will point to XCode, but I don’t want to develop with XCode because I do a lot of wide-ranging work well beyond Apple and macOS. It’s not as bad as Microsoft, who have basically driven me away from Windows permanently with their shenanigans with regards to Windows 11. But it’s getting close. If it gets bad enough I may indeed contemplate migrating to Asahi Linux; that’s another reason why I chose this M1 Max over a later version of Apple Silicon; Asahi Linux was originally developed on, and for, the M1.

Links

Code won’t update on macOS #7426 — https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/7426

The first step in my plan for world conquest having an ESP32-S3-DevKit1 communicate with a MAX7219 is complete. All it took was five wires, two of which supplied power, and a little bit of MicroPython code running on the latest MicroPython release, and I was able to send text to my inexpensive four character matrix display I purchased on Amazon.

The code depends upon a library I found on GitHub (see links section below). Here’s the test code sample I wrote;

# Enable SPI and clear the display, which turns off all LEDs.#import max7219from machine import Pin, SPIimport timespi = SPI(1, 10000000, sck=Pin(12), mosi=Pin(11))cs = Pin(10, Pin.OUT)display=max7219.Matrix8x8(spi, cs, 4)display.fill(0)display.show()time.sleep_ms(500)# Probe the MicroPython/ESP32-S3-DevKit1 environment.#import gcprint(f"  MEM: {gc.mem_free():,} MB")import espprint(f"FLASH: {esp.flash_size():,} MB")import platformprint(f" PLAT: {platform.platform()}")import osUNAME = os.uname()[-1].split(' ')[-1]import binasciiimport machineUNIQUE_ID = binascii.hexlify(machine.unique_id()).decode('ascii').upper()print(f"  UID: {UNIQUE_ID}")SSID = UNAME + '-' + UNIQUE_ID[-4:]print(f" SSID: {SSID}")# Display text on the four 8x8 matrix displays.#display.text(UNIQUE_ID[-4:],0,0,1)display.show()

I’m using Thonny 4.1.4 to program the ESP32-S3. Here’s the output from boot.py in Thonny’s console when it’s run;

  MEM: 8,310,688 MBFLASH: 8,388,608 MB PLAT: MicroPython-1.22.1-xtensa-IDFv5.0.4-with-newlib4.1.0  UID: 7CDFA1E3C534 SSID: ESP32S3-C534

The four characters on the 8×8 displays are the last four characters of the UID. It’s a better “proof of life” than something random. To get the code listing to run, you need to download the single GitHub file from the link below, move it onto the ESP32-S3 controller, and then import it to begin to use the 1088AS displays.

Step 2 is to get Bluetooth operational on the ESP32-S3.

Links

MicroPython MAX7219 8×8 LED Matrix library — https://github.com/mcauser/micropython-max7219

designing the esp32-s3/max7219 device

There are already consequences showing up from this huge rise in global temperature anomalies. For one example, the crazy bad weather over Orlando this evening as you can see in the screen capture at the start.

And then this weather warning from Orange County:

Severe Thunderstorm WarningBeginning: 2024-01-09T22:21:00Ending: 2024-01-09T23:00:00New AlertTHE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN MELBOURNE HAS ISSUED A* SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING FOR...SEMINOLE COUNTY IN EAST CENTRAL FLORIDA...CENTRAL LAKE COUNTY IN EAST CENTRAL FLORIDA...ORANGE COUNTY IN EAST CENTRAL FLORIDA...VOLUSIA COUNTY IN EAST CENTRAL FLORIDA...NORTHWESTERN OSCEOLA COUNTY IN EAST CENTRAL FLORIDA...* UNTIL 600 PM EST.* AT 521 PM EST, SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS WERE LOCATED ALONG A LINEEXTENDING FROM NEAR PIERSON TO ZELLWOOD TO 12 MILES WEST OF FOURCORNERS, MOVING NORTHEAST AT 70 MPH.HAZARD...60 MPH WIND GUSTS.SOURCE...RADAR INDICATED.IMPACT...EXPECT DAMAGE TO ROOFS, SIDING, AND TREES.* LOCATIONS IMPACTED INCLUDE...ORLANDO, DELTONA, DAYTONA BEACH, KISSIMMEE, AND PORT ORANGE.PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...REMAIN ALERT FOR A POSSIBLE TORNADO! TORNADOES CAN DEVELOP QUICKLYFROM SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS. IF YOU SPOT A TORNADO GO AT ONCE TO ASMALL CENTRAL ROOM IN A STURDY STRUCTURE.FOR YOUR PROTECTION MOVE TO AN INTERIOR ROOM ON THE LOWEST FLOOR OF ABUILDING.A TORNADO WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 900 PM EST FOR EAST CENTRALFLORIDA

All this on 9 January. I’ve lived here since 1984, and I’ve never seen or experienced anything like this, until today. This is now the new normal, and it’s not good at all.

Links

First results are in: 2023 temperatures were stunningly warm — https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/01/first-results-are-in-2023-temperatures-were-stunningly-warm/

I’m designing a circuit that uses an ESP32-S3-DevKit1 to drive a MAX2719/7221 and 1088AS, just as I promised in the last post. The broad steps are:

1. Write software to communicate with the MAX7219 and 1088AS,
2. Write software that enables Bluetooth on the ESP32-S3,
3. Write software on both the ESP32-S3 and Raspberry Pi 5 to communicate status and messages to display on the 1088AS.

In order to create the schematic diagram in KiCad I had to import symbols for the Espressif components. There’s a link at the bottom that leads to Espressif’s GitHub repo, complete with instructions on how import those symbols into KiCad 7. The Espressif instructions are short, sweet, clear, and they work without exception.

I’m also reading Espressif’s documentation on how to work with the ESP32-S3’s SPI port.

Links

• Espressif KiCad Libraries — https://github.com/espressif/kicad-libraries
• SPI Master Driver — https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/latest/esp32s3/api-reference/peripherals/spi_master.html

It bothered me quite a bit that my last few schematic diagrams were missing the 8×8 LED matrix display. As it turns out, the part number for the 8×8 LED display is printed on the side: 1088AC. When I went looking for any part sheets for it, all I found was a single page with this printed on it

It was a PDF with a copy of a copy of the circuit diagram. I could barely make out the column, row, and physical pin numbers. I then went looking for an open source KiCad part for the 1088AC and found one on GitHub, which I forked and then cloned from my fork. I was able to quickly ascertain that the part was designed for KiCad 6. From there I used KiCad’s part library manager to import the part and then convert to KiCad 7 format. I had to do a bit more work with it before I could use it. For example, all the LED symbols were reversed, pointing up (as common anode) instead of down (common cathode). A little work to select and flip each diode symbol took care of that. I also change all the row pins from input to output, as they were all defined as input.

I am aiming to order a dozen or so MAX7221 parts from e-bay. The MAX7221 has a few additions internally over the MAX7219, one of which is that it support QSPI format data communications. Same price as the MAX2719, same pinout.

What’s interesting about the MAX7219/MAX7221 part sheet, it mentioned on the front page that it was suitable for LED matrix displays, but all the circuit diagram examples only show seven-segment by eight character displays, such as the one on the right above.

More learned with KiCad 7; better control with the schematic diagram, the ability to import parts, and the ability to convert from KiCad 6 to KiCad 7. When I’m finished with the 1088AC KiCad drawing part I’ll update my GitHub version and post a link to it in another post.

Links

My copy with updates and migration to KiCad 7. Note that only the 1088AS part has been updated. — https://github.com/wbeebe/kicad-LED_DotMatrix

You’re looking at a very simple circuit diagram, where I’ve wired a HiLetgo MAX7219 Dot Matrix Module to the Raspberry Pi 5 via its 40 pin connector. In spite of the add for the module on Amazon (see below) it works just fine with the Raspberry Pi and a Python library, Luma.LED_Matrix, I found on the web (see links below).

All I wanted to do was hook up one of these inexpensive four-character modules to a Raspberry Pi 5 and scroll text across it using Luma.LED_Matrix. It does not work with Ubuntu 23.10. It works just fine with the latest release of Debian GNU/Linux 12, a.k.a. Raspberry Pi OS. The problem is that Ubuntu 23.10 does not enable the SPI kernel drivers. Raspberry Pi OS does.

The screen capture above shows what the SPI devices will appear as in the dev file system if the kernel drivers are properly configured for the SPI peripherals. When you try this on Ubuntu all that is shown is /dev/spidev10.0. The other two devices are missing.

There’s not much more to say at this point except I am extremely aggravated to have to back down to Raspberry Pi OS. Ubuntu 23.10 is a gorgeous UI and a highly performant distribution on the Raspberry Pi 5. Getting it set up was no different than on an x86-64 system, and once set up was indistinguishable from normal Ubuntu. All the tools worked, especially Visual Studio Code, and I was developing command line tools written in Rust. It was a breeze doing anything non-trivial. Until I tried physical computing, at which point Ubuntu’s limitations in those areas became evident.

It’s not a problem to physically switch between operating systems. I just don’t want to, and based on my experience so far with Ubuntu 23.10, I will be dragged back kicking and screaming to Raspberry Pi OS on the Raspberry Pi 5. As soon as I can come up with a good solution to this mess, I’ll post it.

Links

Luma.LED_Matrix — https://github.com/rm-hull/luma.led_matrix

moving back to raspbian 64 bit, dropping work on wiringpi

Once upon a time, way back in 2004 (yes, 20 years ago now), I signed up for a Live Journal account and then completely forgot about it. That is, until 31 December 2023 when Live Journal sent me this reminder of my 19th anniversary. Lucky me. I don’t normally check on my Yahoo mail account all that often. It is, shall we say, my low-value email account I give to low-value organizations such as Live Journal. Or Disney… but I digress.

Anyway, I decided to check out what it was like, because believe me, I had totally forgotten it was there. So I clicked the link to look, and got the following:

Live Journal wanted me to log in, and amazingly I still remembered the password, which is a massive security no-no; if you can remember a password from 20 years ago, it means you should change it ASAP if for no other reason than it’s probably all over the dark web by now. And Live Journal agreed with that sentiment, telling me it was “out of date” and to reset it. So I did.

I accepted the new and improved user agreement, which among other things allowed Live Journal and its agents to harvest my organs when I die, among other actions.

Once in I discovered that I’d created exactly four entries, two of them dupes, back on 31 December 2004. The handle invader_moose was my youngest daughter, who was a big fan of Invader Zim and riffed off the show’s name. The first entry at the bottom explains it all. Unfortunately, after trying out exactly four posts I promptly forgot about it and moved on with other more exciting life adventures.

I will not post anything new to Live Journal, unless it’s to troll, and I’ve got better things to do with my time. If you want to know why Live Journal is so radioactive social-media wise (even more than Twitter X), then read the link below.

Links

Whatever Happened to LiveJournal? — https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/postscript/whatever-happened-livejournal/

I dropped Disney+ when they notified the world how they were going to jack up their monthly fees to view their streaming service. I’d already grown “fatigued” with all the MCU and Star Wars content that was flooding the service, so all I needed to pull the trigger and leave was that cost increase announcement. That was back in August (see link below).

Then in November Hulu and Disney+ announced a dual deal, as well as a cheaper advertising supported tier, so I signed back up, ostensibly to watch all the content on Hulu. And there’s been quite a bit of it. Disney+ came along for an additional $2.99/month, so I wasn’t too annoyed to have them back.

But you’d think that it was Disney+ that was the king of the duo if you look at all the spam advertising they’ve sent me. This latest was from ABC, a legacy TV channel I absolutely loathe. And what are they advertising at the top of the spam advert? An episode from their dumber-than-a-bag-of-hammers Golden Bachelor. I will have been married for 40 years come this July. The idea I want to watch some old fart get married is so far from anything I want to watch as to be totally alien. At this point in a human’s life, marriage means absolutely nothing unless there’s money and a pre-nup involved. Otherwise just shack up and be happy in each other’s company. Take all that money you’d spend on a formal wedding and elope to some really nice vacation spot while Earth’s climate still allows for such excesses.

I’ve clicked the link to be removed from all ABC advertising, so hopefully nothing else will come in from ABC. But this isn’t the first such spam advertising email from a Disney “property,” and I don’t think it’ll be the last. I wrote above that I thought $2.99 for Disney+ wasn’t going to be such a big deal. Now I’m not so sure.

Links

shedding sunday — applications and subscriptions

The MicroPython organization released version 1.22 on 27 December 2023. I missed it until today because it was Christmas time and I was, believe it or not, taking time off from some of the nerdier aspects of software development. But I downloaded it today and installed it and for once in a very long time it worked straight “out of the box.” I didn’t have to download source and build an image myself. What’s more the binary I downloaded for this board has been built to support octal addressed PSRAM, something that’s been missing completely since version 1.19.

So far everything seems to work, especially my stand-along WiFi access point (see above) written entirely in MicroPython. I obviously have a lot to do investigating it, and I will given enough time. By the way, the full version shows that this release was build with Espressif’s ESP-IDF versoin 5.0.4. Espressif has released a 5.0.5, but I can attest that MicroPython will not build with 5.0.5. So if you want or need to build from MicroPython source then make sure you have the proper toolchain installed.

For the curious this is running on an ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1 N8R8 (8 MiB non-volatile flash, 8 MiB PSRAM).

Links

MicroPython Download — https://micropython.org/download/ESP32_GENERIC_S3/

I have a license to run Parallels Desktop. I started using the application three years ago because I needed to have instances of several Linux distributions conveniently available while I was working on my 2019 MBP. Later I installed an instance of Windows 10 as a virtual machine in order to support C# development within Visual Studio Community. The version of VS available for macOS at that time was a poor cousin to the same versions running on Windows, and to add insult to injury Microsoft wouldn’t provide a community version for macOS. Thus the least expensive route was to pay for a yearly license of Parallels Desktop and install an instance of Windows 10 Pro provided by Parallels.

That worked well until January of 2023 when my last license expired and my local copy of Parallels stopped working. Late last year I finally decided I needed to purchase a new license, so when Black Friday rolled around Parallels had a less-than-half-price sale on a yearly license ($56) and I sprung for it.

When I powered up all my virtual machines to check them out and update them, that included the Windows 10 VM. Except, Parallels automagically updated my Windows 10 installation to Windows 11. Not much of an issue, except when I decided to uninstall Microsoft Edge. So when I went into Settings and then Apps (applications), and went hunting for Microsoft Edge, the dropdown showed only Modify was active, not Uninstall.

There is no reason why I should be blocked from removing Microsoft software, especially the browser. This gives me flashbacks to the late 1990s when Microsoft was being sued for its placement of Internet Explorer among many other monopolistic behaviors. Right now I work entirely within Vivaldi on Windows 11, but it would be nice to get rid of Edge because it’s my VM on my personal computer, and as the saying goes, my computer, my rules.

By the way, on the Windows 10 Pro installation on my other computers (the computers that can’t upgrade to Windows 11), I have removed all Microsoft browsers and installed Vivaldi everywhere. There is no reason to reverse browser removal policy on Windows 11, except that Microsoft is just an absolutely shit company.

Update

This article from The Verge is interesting. Basically, Microsoft has until March to provide the European Economic Area the ability to uninstall Edge and disable Bing search, among other things. If EU Windows users are allowed to do this, then why the hell not US Windows users?

The EU will finally free Windows users from Bing — https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/16/23963579/microsoft-windows-11-eu-digital-markets-act-feature-changes

Some personal history: I’ve been using Wireshark since it was called Ethereal, all the way back to the very start of the 21st century, when I was introduced to an early version I used to examine a workplace network issue. Wireshark’s strongest feature is its ability to capture everything and then decode the packets it finds. I’ve been able to solve more than one seemingly intractable problem with Wireshark after all other attempts at problem solving failed.

In the screen capture above you can observe all the various devices on my home network sending out network messages. For example, you can see one of my Espressif boards (an ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1-N8R8) sending out an address resolution protocal (ARP) message. The lower windows show a packet I selected for further examination. It’s associated with one of the Amazon devices I have running in the house, and I do have a few.

The device I’ve been searching for recently is my Ring doorbell camera. I want to find it, then associate it to a fixed IP address within my WiFi access point, then trap all communications to another node within my home so I can enable all the features it can support locally and then shut down my monthly payment to use this device. I don’t need the service Amazon provides, but more specifically, I don’t want any more surveillance video flowing out to Amazon to be used by “law enforcement.” This is the start of my drive to discover all information flowing out of my home, and to curtail as much of it as possible. I’m done being a part of surveillance capitalism.

Wireshark Installation Note

This is installed via Homebrew. If you install Wireshark, then make sure to use brew install --cask wireshark in order to pick up the GUI frontend. If you perform a brew installation without cask, then you only get the command line portion. If you try to pick up the GUI with a following cask installation, it will fail, forcing you to remove the initial wireshark installation and starting over with cask.

Links

• Wireshark Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireshark
• Wireshark — https://www.wireshark.org
• Surveillance capitalism — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism
• High tech is watching you — https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/03/harvard-professor-says-surveillance-capitalism-is-undermining-democracy/

problems running wireshark on macos 13

The year 2023 was a real personal shock on a very personal level. My father passed away along with an aunt on my mother’s side. Three more deaths rounded out the year, one of them both a co-worker and engineer as well as a great friend who I met back in 1985 at a local computer club meeting in downtown Orlando. His small company was critical to me surviving a layoff that lasted essentially from June until October of 1989; he hired me as a consultant to help write some important embedded software for a system used on draglines, one of them a machine in central Texas I helped him work on. Many memories, many projects. In the end he seemed to slip away.

My wife is also experiencing some serious medical issues. In May, the day before Mother’s Day, she wound up heading to the hospital in an ambulance. Right before the ambulance came I injected her with an epinephrine pen because she was “presenting” all the symptoms of anaphylactic shock. The head of the ER where she was taken stated I probably saved her life with that action. While I’m certainly glad I did, it still shook me up quite a bit to realize how close she might have come to her own death. That in turn forced me to consider what to do if she were to pass from me, and ways to watch and prevent the May episode from happening again. I’ve been thinking of it ever since.

She spent a week in hospital. We still don’t know what happened to her in May. The medical system here in Florida has messed up one critical test after another, and let one important opportunity after another slip by. We’ve traveled to specialists all over, one down in Fort Lauderdale, and she’s scheduled to see another at the University of Miami mid-January. She’s found one local doctor who is actually sympathetic and is trying to get to the bottom of what is happening, and just doesn’t dismiss her out of hand.

I’ve also lined up two different work opportunities I hope open up this year. To be blunt I need the additional income. Expenses have come up that need to be taken care of, and there are more in the future. The idea that retirement is some golden paradise is a farce, especially for mere mortals such as Judy and I.

The good news is that I don’t have the genetic predisposition for Alzheimers, and my health habit (I never drank nor smoked, and was never a “recreational” drug user) also bolster my health and considerably lower the chances of my developing Alzheimers. There’s also a report out now showing a strong link between gingivitis and Alzheimers, as the bacteria P. gingivalis is found in the brains of many who have died of Alzheimers. The amyloid buildup in the victim’s brains was a symptom, not the cause, and was the brain’s way of trying to trap the bacterial invaders. I go to a dentist every six months and my mouth health is in very good shape. I have all my teeth and no cavities.

This year is a major election year with the Orange One running again on the Republican ticket and threatening democracy everywhere in this country. Now’s not the time to shrink into a hole and pull it in after me. I need to take a more alert, and if possible, a more politically activist stance.

A lot of challenges face me to be sure. This coming year won’t be boring, that’s for sure.

Links

Scientists May Have Found the Cause of Alzheimer’s Disease—And How to Reverse It — https://www.thehealthy.com/alzheimers/common-disease-can-actually-kickstart-alzheimers/

Unlike many, I do not move all my macOS settings from machine to machine unless the new machine is a complete replacement for the old machine and the old machine is on its last legs. I’ve done that exactly once, from my 2015 MBP to the 2019 MBP. After that transfer I spent a fair amount of time weeding out items that did not make sense on the new machine as well as items that were a good idea at the time, but time later proved to be a bad choice.

I made the decision after that one full transfer between MBPs to carefully curate all software before installing anything on the new machine. One of the choices I tried on the older MBP was Powerline. It didn’t work, and I almost skipped it entirely on the new MBP, but I decided to install it anyway and try once more to make it work.

I’ve been using Powerline on my Linux systems for some number of years now. I like what it does and how it looks and I try to install it anywhere I have a terminal and a command line prompt. It’s a bit counter-intuitive to want to have a sophisticated command line and terminal on a computer with a graphical user interface, but I keep a terminal environment active because I have decades of CLI experience that has served me admirably (once I was properly trained on how to use it). This post documents how I finally figured it out and what I did to get it to work. And it does work, both on the command line as well as within vi/vim.

Initial Environment

This machine has the following pre-installed:

• macOS 14.2.1 Sonoma
• zsh 5.9 (x86_64-apple-darwin23.0)
• python 3.9.6

This is all you really need to get started. A lot of how-tos (all of them old to very old) insist you install Homebrew (brew), and then via the brew command install zsh. The version of zsh Apple currently uses is the latest stable release, a far cry from the ancient version of bash it used to use.

Installation

Installation needs three main pieces; iTerm2, the Nerd Hack font and the Powerline status software itself.

iTerm2 can be downloaded from here: https://iterm2.com. Once downloaded, unzip the downloaded file and start the binary. Once running, iTerm2 will pick up and use zsh and it will automagically ask you if you want to move iTerm2 into the Application folder of you Mac. Select yes when asked. From that point iTerm2 can be selected via Launchpad, and once launched, you can right click the resultant icon in the Dock and chose to have it stay in the Dock (right click | Options | Keep in Dock).

The font I installed is Hack and can be found here: https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/releases . Download Hack.zip and unzip it, then use Apple’s Font Book utility to install the fonts.

Not all of them will install due to issues with certain fonts, and rather than hassle with trying to resolve those issues I chose to skip them. Skipping the problematic fonts still allowed the fonts I needed to get installed, so no problems there.

Once the fonts are installed, open iTerm2’s Preferences and go to Profiles.

Select Hack NF as the Font, Regular weight. I chose to use a 15 point font size because the size of the 16″ display makes reading 15 point text in iTerm2 very easy. Even at 15 points a lot of text can still be seen in the terminal window.

With the terminal and font set up, install the Python package powerline-status using pip: pip3 install powerline-status.

Once installed execute the following command:

$ pip3 show powerline-statusName: powerline-statusVersion: 2.7Summary: The ultimate statusline/prompt utility.Home-page: https://github.com/powerline/powerlineAuthor: Kim SilkebaekkenAuthor-email: kim.silkebaekken+vim@gmail.comLicense: MITLocation: /Users/wbeebe/Library/Python/3.9/lib/python/site-packagesRequires:Required-by:

The line we’re interested in is the Location at line 9 in the listing. In this example, because I’m not running as root, the package is installed locally in my home directory, which it should be. Every home directory has a $HOME/Library directory. It’s underneath site-packages that you’ll find the site package for powerline. Here’s what we are looking for specifically:

$ ls -AlFh Library/Python/3.9/lib/python/site-packages/powerline/bindingstotal 24-rw-r--r--   1 wbeebe  staff 0B Dec 29 15:32 __init__.pydrwxr-xr-x   3 wbeebe  staff96B Dec 29 17:03 __pycache__/drwxr-xr-x   4 wbeebe  staff   128B Dec 29 15:32 awesome/drwxr-xr-x   3 wbeebe  staff96B Dec 29 15:32 bar/drwxr-xr-x   3 wbeebe  staff96B Dec 29 15:32 bash/-rw-r--r--   1 wbeebe  staff   9.8K Dec 29 15:32 config.pydrwxr-xr-x   3 wbeebe  staff96B Dec 29 15:32 fish/drwxr-xr-x   3 wbeebe  staff96B Dec 29 15:32 i3/drwxr-xr-x   6 wbeebe  staff   192B Dec 29 15:32 ipython/drwxr-xr-x   3 wbeebe  staff96B Dec 29 15:32 lemonbar/drwxr-xr-x   4 wbeebe  staff   128B Dec 29 15:32 pdb/drwxr-xr-x   4 wbeebe  staff   128B Dec 29 15:32 qtile/drwxr-xr-x   3 wbeebe  staff96B Dec 29 15:32 rc/drwxr-xr-x   3 wbeebe  staff96B Dec 29 15:32 shell/drwxr-xr-x   3 wbeebe  staff96B Dec 29 15:32 tcsh/drwxr-xr-x  11 wbeebe  staff   352B Dec 29 15:32 tmux/drwxr-xr-x   6 wbeebe  staff   192B Dec 29 17:03 vim/drwxr-xr-x   4 wbeebe  staff   128B Dec 29 15:32 wm/drwxr-xr-x   4 wbeebe  staff   128B Dec 29 15:32 zsh/

The two folders we’re interested in are line 19 (vim) and line 21 (zsh). Since we’re interested in zsh, let’s concentrate on that for the moment.

Underneath the zsh folder is one file we need:

ls -AlFh Library/Python/3.9/lib/python/site-packages/powerline/bindings/zshtotal 32-rw-r--r--  1 wbeebe  staff   5.4K Dec 29 15:32 __init__.py-rw-r--r--  1 wbeebe  staff   6.5K Dec 29 15:32 powerline.zsh

The file powerline.zsh is sourced inside the .zshrc file. But before we add this to our .zshrc file, we need to make one more change for the powerline script to execute. At the same level as the lib (library) folder is a bin (binary) folder. Here’s what that folder holds:

$ ls -AlFh Library/Python/3.9/bintotal 160-rwxr-xr-x  1 wbeebe  staff   263B Dec 29 15:32 pip*-rwxr-xr-x  1 wbeebe  staff   263B Dec 29 15:32 pip3*-rwxr-xr-x  1 wbeebe  staff   263B Dec 29 15:32 pip3.11*-rwxr-xr-x  1 wbeebe  staff   263B Dec 29 15:32 pip3.9*-rwxr-xr-x  1 wbeebe  staff34K Dec 29 15:32 powerline*-rwxr-xr-x  1 wbeebe  staff   624B Dec 29 15:32 powerline-config*-rwxr-xr-x  1 wbeebe  staff13K Dec 29 15:32 powerline-daemon*-rwxr-xr-x  1 wbeebe  staff   385B Dec 29 15:32 powerline-lint*-rwxr-xr-x  1 wbeebe  staff   928B Dec 29 15:32 powerline-render*

You need all the highlighted files for Powerline to work properly. For that, you’ll need to add the path to bin to your full path in .zshrc, for example;

export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/Library/Python/3.9/bin

before you add the following line to .zshrc;

source $HOME/Library/Python/3.9/lib/python/site-packages/powerline/bindings/zsh/powerline.zsh

Once all of that is completed then you should at least get the colorful powerline prompt as seen in the screen capture at the top of this post.

vi/vim Setup

First the bad news. The version of vi/vim supplied by Apple wasn’t built to support Python scripting, and you need that support for this to work. The good news is you can get a version that works, but you’ll have to install Homebrew and then use Homebrew to install that version of Python. First, go to the Brew site ( https://brew.sh ) and follow their directions to install it. Once installed you can install the “proper” vi/vim that will support Python scripting. Please note that you’ll need to add the location where Homebrew installs binaries (/opt/homebrew/bin) to your path in order to execute them. And this should be at the start of path, not the end, otherwise you’ll keep executing Apple’s version instead of the version installed by Homebrew.

For vi/vim, you need to add the following to your .vimrc configuration file;

set rtp+=$HOME/Library/Python/3.9/lib/python/site-packages/powerline/bindings/vimset laststatus=2set t_Co=256

Once that’s in your vi configuration file, the status line should look like the following:

There’s a lot more going on inside my vi config file, but the last three lines enable the bottom status line, and that’s what’s important here.