Back when I did my Model M thingy with CircuitPython, I encountered a lot of difficulties doing I/O. For one, the I/O speed was much too slow for bit-banging anything in Python. Now, you could write some C and call it from Python, but that defeats the benefit of working with Python to begin with. Additionally, hardware peripherals seemed to be destined to be behind in Python. I doubt this will ever change, but a certain recent product seems to offer a bizarre best-of-all-worlds.
Now I know the first time I wrote about my Model M keyboard I said it wasn’t worth it to leave a $10 dev board attached to the keyboard, opting instead to use an adapter, but I’ve changed my mind. My change of heart came about for two reasons: I couldn’t get the $5 adapter to work. Being able to remap keys on the fly is definitely worth $5. That second point is in reference to my recent blog post.
Back when I did my arcade machine, I encountered two pretty big problems. First of all, writing the code to mimick a USB keyboard was not straightforward at all, and I resorted to copying some sample code and modifying it. But I didn’t understand the sample code at all. I know the TI boards are probably aimed at a more hardcode audience, one that wants to have as much control over the hardware as possibl, and while I usually love that sort of thing, there are days where I want to just write simple code.