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Micro:bit developer community

tech.microbit.org

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We build editor for microbit (beta - https://pxt.microbit.org). Code is open source as well(https://github.com/Microsoft/pxt). Give us some feedback.

Can we agree that you seem to have one of the greatest jobs at Microsoft?

:-). Yes I do love it here. Thanks!

This is wonderfully fun.

Here is the BBC's portal site for the micro:bit aimed specifically at kids

https://www.microbit.co.uk/

Hopefully, all the videos on the site are accessible to international viewers, otherwise it would be a missed opportunity to spread the knowledge to everyone.

So this is not available in the US yet. And there is no link to a reseller directly from their site.

Yeah I waited for a while to see if a US seller would appear but ended up buying one at pimoroni. glad I stopped waiting, its really fun to tinker with.

You can use any nRF51822 board, and there are a lot available. I'd probably get the official dev kit as it is pretty cheap and can be used to program bare nRF5x chips (it has a segger programmer on board).

I bought one. Programming it online and being able drag/drop a hex file onto the device makes it super simple and approachable.

Very cool product.

That's how all mbed boards are programmed (one of the ways anyway). It's ok until you need a real IDE and then they don't have any great solutions.

That used to be the case, but have a look at the new mbed exporters - you can now export to: uVision 4 uVision 5 DS-5 LPCXpresso IAR Embedded Workbench CooCox CoIDE Kinetis Design Studio Simplicity Studio Atmel Studio SW4STM32 Systems Workbench e2studio Emblocks

(taken from this recent post https://developer.mbed.org/blog/entry/Fixed-exporters-in-the... )

Which is a healthy start! There's an open source project for export to things that mbed uses: https://github.com/project-generator/project_generator

full disclosure: I am part of the mbed team

While that is certainly good, people using Arduino now aren't going to spend £1k on IAR or whatever. Emblocks always seemed like a good option but as far as I can tell it isn't developed any more.

Qt Creator, Visual Studio Code, KDevelop etc. would be more welcome. I did write an exporter for Qt Creator actually a year or two ago and abandoned it after the move to Yotta. Guess it is time to revive it!

Btw where is the mbed team based?

I see these are available to buy in the UK now (has singles from other retailers http://uk.farnell.com/bbc-microbit-reseller). http://uk.farnell.com/bbc-microbit?CMP=AFC-AN-UK-ALL-473347 Anyone how to buy a single one in the US? My 8yo was going to get an arduino robot for Christmas but this might simpler to use I think.

We (Pimoroni) offer shipping worldwide, though obviously that's likely more expensive than using a local vendor if you can find one. We also have a range of other accessories like a nice breadboarding breakout for the IO pins: https://shop.pimoroni.com/collections/micro-bit

I bought mine from Pimoroni. Took two weeks to get to California. I paid in bitcoin so I'm not sure what the exact cost was in dollars. I bought two more for other people.

Much simpler for beginners. And they sell a coin cell add on board so your kid can carry it around and show people. Or put it on a lanyard.

I'm sorry the shipping took so long, usually standard shipping to the US arrives within a week (though we offer UPS next day services for extra cost).

I'm assuming someone will try to drive close-enough NTSC/PAL signals from the analog outputs, and create (a) demoscene demos and (b) Doom. Any links to such hijinks yet?

Haven't seen that yet myself but I did see a guy write flappy bird on it.

I have a hard time understanding the educational value of the micro bit. It seems way to underpowered to do anything interesting educational wise.

I think you underestimate how much having something tactile, with buttons and LEDs, can really shift how younger students perceive learning. I volunteer teach a group of 8/9 year olds an intro to programming class and the difference between teaching them Python using CLI-esque tools and making things light up on the micro:bit is astounding.

Is that age group the best age to learn? I notice they're targeting year 7/8/9 in the UK - is that high school?

Yes, in the UK high school starts in year 7 (age 11-12)

The ages for education/schools in the UK:

     5-11    -> Primary School
    11-16    -> Secondary School
    16-18    -> Further Education (often called college, or Sixth Form)
    18-21/22 -> Higher Education (University/undergraduate)

Some secondary schools are large enough/have enough expertise to have a Sixth Form as part of it. Some children go to "preparatory school" until age 13 when they enter a secondary school.

Maybe you are right, I am just thinking it would be harder to to get a program to do something interesting.

I think you have it backwards. It might be easier to print "hello world", but that's not interesting.

Blinking an LED? That's actually interesting. You can show your friends. You can put it in another toy. A child can do a lot with a blinking LED.

https://microbit-micropython.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tutori...

How do you figure that? The chips I learned low-level programming on were significantly less capable than the Nordic chip on this board.

I agree about being underpowered. But when it comes to education its more about software support and community.

I'd say the same and the first two generations of raspberry pi, but the community and price trumped all.

The Micro:Bit is significantly more powerful than the machines I learned to program on when I was a kid.

One if my children (12yro) was given a microbit by his school and got a lot of enjoyment from programming it. He was already into Python, but it seemed to me that a physical device made programming less abstract and it's limited power forced him to focus on essentials.

I learnt how memory works on a machine with a Z80. You don't need power for education, you need immediacy and tangibility.

I would like to once more criticize the fact that BBC re-invented the wheel (and micro:bit) at a time where $5 Raspberry Pi 0 is widely available. It would have been much better to spend the effort of producing better learning software and ecosystem for Raspberry Pi instead. Someone boasted about the lengths it took to make Python run on micro:bit and it still isn't full Python and no chance for anything graphically intensive, whereas you can code Minecraft on Raspberry Pi and actually plug it to your TV.

The RPi Zero was not available when the micro:bit project kicked off - indeed, the micro:bit was planned for release last September. This is about ease of development (in particular in terms of not requiring any toolchain setup) and immediate interaction with physical things.

I somewhat agree, but would like to counter by saying that the micro:bit has been an invaluable tool for me personally to teach fundamental hardware programming. The pi zero, while a great tool for more advanced programming, still requires some boilerplate knowledge of electrical engineering that surpasses what one would want to teach someone who just wants to make some lights flash.

The micro:bit has, built in: a 5×5 array of leds, an accelerometer, a digital compass, 2 push buttons, a set of piezo / touch io, and a low-power bluetooth radio — all of which have api libraries and documentation that a user doesn't need to write themselves.

While there are a multitude of awesome things that can be done with the pi zero, there's still a non-trivial amount of setup required to program basic hardware features.

I continue to believe its a bit more nuanced than that.

I agree that if you just want to teach Python programming that a RasPi (original model is fine), a TV and a keyboard is really all you need.

I also believe that some folks are more systems oriented and would like to learn about "computers" as opposed to "programming computers". Much of the success in the embedded world comes from people who want to understand the way the computer starts from scratch and then runs its completed program. It is more difficult to serve those folks by starting with a Cortex-A architecture device.

I know everybody already got on your case about this but just want to say its all about narrowing the scope. The microbit is much more accessible. It has a narrow range of use cases that really makes it easy to choose projects. It is plug and play, no flashing, no other parts required (no mini Hdmi adapter, everybody has a microUSB cable around).

PiBakery has helped make setting up a pi easier though.

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