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  • Author Author: shabaz
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Micro Bit

shabaz

Interesting little microcontroller board, to be developed as part of a BBC plan to distribute them for free to 1M 11-year old children according to this news announcement.

(Image source: bbc.co.uk)image

Apparently this is not the actual incarnation that will be distributed - it will also feature Bluetooth.

The shape looks interesting - like a robot with eyes : ) or a little professor.

 

I think it is a good concept - it is a nice blend of toy-like appearance combined with educational material. Some kids will use it for

cute animations on the LED matrix, and learn in the process! Others will probably fit (say) wires to what looks like screw terminal holes to connect

up multiple ones perhaps - no soldering needed : ) Like an electronic origami perhaps.

(image source: naturallyeducational.com)image

 

<Edit: added some more pics from BBC news site>:

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  • Interested in the micro:bit? We're giving away 5 to be RoadTested! Click here to apply.

  • in reply to michaelkellett

    Hi Michael,

     

    The good thing is that a normally very hard bit (the children-friendly app, in-browser simulator and the educational PDF material) seems to be quite far progressed. I think they can easily launch that this year from the looks of it, from what I've heard. It is nicely laid out, and being the BBC, they can refer teachers or children off to training bitesize videos throughout the material.

    The material is targeted toward the current hardware I'm guessing - but hopefully would be near-identical for the final board design if they keep the same 5x5 matrix, etc, and hide most differences so to speak.

  • in reply to shabaz

    Thanks for that link -

    It seems that we are in vaporware territory - the prototype in all the pictures is definitely an Atmel AVR, but now it seems that ARM are claiming it as an MBED device with Freescale (now of course Frescale/NXP) and Nordic (presumably for the radio) as partners.

     

    My heart is sinking - at first it seemed a nice idea but it's a long way off - and with all these axes being ground who knows what it'll end up like.

     

    MK

  • in reply to clem57

    Just found the ARM press release:

    Internet of Things: ARM and the BBC collaborate... | ARM Connected Community

    It confirms BT LE, and OTA upgrades, and that it will be ARM based (guessing Freescale since they mention them specifically).

  • in reply to clem57

    Hi!

    I wonder if it may well remain an ATmega, since their current exercises using the graphical language are not stretching the mega. They can instead have a lot of the intelligence in the dev environment running in the cloud for example.

     

    I wonder if they will really support Python (i.e. was the news article correct or not - for example the article mentioned raspberry pi foundation as a partner but RPF isn't listed in the partners list in the BBC press release - although RPF may have relationships with the official partners, or RPF may have been accidentally missed out on the list). I know Python is a popular language for some tasks, but it wasn't always, and perhaps 11-year olds can benefit from the Micro Bit with other languages such as the graphical one (e.g. scratch) anyway. The Python Software Foundation is listed as a 'Product Champion', not a Partner. The bluetooth device may have a separate processor.

     

    This is all speculation though, (and Atmel is not listed as a Partner either, so it is clear things are in flux) so you may be right.