I had three of these little Kano pixel units which I bought for the kids to learn some programming on when they were on sale. Turns out the kids didn’t really use them much, and now Kano seems to be history.

The boards are based on the ESP-32 WROOM microcontroller, and can be programmed using the Arduino IDE, but they can also run MicroPython – a version of the Python programming language that runs on microcontrollers like this one. Furthermore, there is already a library which adds support for the LED matrix (128 NeoPixels), the buttons and the rotary dial on the top. Sadly, it does not have support for the USB connectors, or the built-in microphone (which I suspect is connected via the 4th USB channel that the hub IC on the board provides).

Once I had it running Python, my next thought was what could I do with it…