Add support for SPIKE Prime hub with new internal electronics (released in 2026)

[Niki20source]

This hub has different internal electronics and requires different firmware. Pybricks does not support it yet. We are working on it!

[Niki20source]

Hello, your software supposedly does not support my spike prime, it was purchased 3 weeks ago and I would need your pybricks for a competition that is taking place in 2 weeks, could you please solve this?

[dlech]

As the message says, we are working on it. I'm afraid it won't be ready in 2 weeks though.

Maybe you could borrow an older SPIKE Prime hub from another team for this competition?

[zoligyenge]

Does anybody know what was changed in the 2026 Spike Prime Hub? Surprizing, given the summer 2026 retirement?

[laurensvalk]

Hardware manufacturers often make small changes as supply chains evolve, so it is probably just minor changes that have no real effect for the end user. But we do need to make updates before we release anything just to be safe.

This also happened with the EV3 several times. There are a few EV3 variants with different Bluetooth chips, I think because an old Panasonic chip was at some point retired.

[dnlschmidt]

Are you also experiencing the same issue with the new hardware, where DFU mode doesn't work via the Bluetooth button like it used to?

[laurensvalk]

Yes, it has a different button combination. And it takes a bit of practice. It works, but it's not ideal for beginning users. So hopefully we can find a simpler solution.

[dnlschmidt]

When I run REPL “machine.bootloader()”, it enters DFU mode. Using the latest version of dfu.py from the repository, I can also back up and restore the firmware. However, the hub will not start with a different ‘older’ firmware version. You can restore the original to continue.

[laurensvalk]

Indeed, the new hub requires new firmware.

But you can install the back up again to restore, right?