The timer prescaler is buffered by default, and this patch enables ARPE
which buffers the auto-reload register. With both of these registers
buffered it's now possible to smoothly change the timer's frequency and
have a smoothly varying PWM output.
Prior to this patch calling pyb.Timer(id) would always create a new timer
instance, even if there was an existing one. This patch fixes this
behaviour to match other peripherals, like UART, such that constructing a
timer with just the id will retrieve any existing instances.
The patch also refactors the way timers are validated on construction to
simplify and reduce code size.
connect, send, recv, sendto and recvfrom now release the GIL. accept
already releases the GIL because it calls mp_hal_delay_ms() within its
busy-wait loop.
Previous to this patch the i2c.scan() method would do up to 100 probes per
I2C address, to detect the devices on the bus. This repeated probing was a
relic from when the code was copied from the accelerometer initialisation,
which requires to do repeated probes while waiting for the accelerometer
chip to turn on.
But I2C devices shouldn't need more than 1 probe to detect their presence,
and the generic software I2C implementation uses 1 probe successfully. So
this patch changes the implementation to use 1 probe per address, which
significantly speeds up the scan operation.
This is to keep the top-level directory clean, to make it clear what is
core and what is a port, and to allow the repository to grow with new ports
in a sustainable way.