I think they've missed the boat. It was so frustrating having the limited functionality earlier. I purchased and gave approx half a dozen of these away as Xmas presents to some kids/family, not heard back anything since..
Friends give friends Arduino's : )
They're not perfect by a long shot either, but infinitely more usable even by kids.
I think they've missed the boat. It was so frustrating having the limited functionality earlier. I purchased and gave approx half a dozen of these away as Xmas presents to some kids/family, not heard back anything since..
Friends give friends Arduino's : )
They're not perfect by a long shot either, but infinitely more usable even by kids.
I think that you will find that they are aimed at very different audiences however.
I suspect that like the micro:bit the codebug was primarily aimed at younger children as opposed to the makerspace. Hence the simplified child-friendly design and graphical programming environment.
What I think lets a lot of these things down is the lack of supporting educational material to go along with them at the time the launch, so as to grab the attention and to keep it. It needs to be both fun and educational. However usually the product launch is well behind schedule and by the time enough supporting material has appeared another device has already entered the market claiming to be better and offer more.
Hi Dave, You're right, and I honestly did reserve judgement to see what kids would make of the codebug, but I'm frustrated because it probably did no good to those kids - I might as well have got them a book voucher or movie tickets and it would have been a more useful xmas gift.
The microbit on the other hand truly has an aim to be child-friendly without foisting a sensorless, wireless-connectivity-less LED trinket on them as the codebug effectively is (was) without any sensible connectivity options and as you say, very little support material.
The microbit looks spectacular to be honest. The codebug I suspect (just a personal opinion) was just an attempt to make money once the creators realized it wasn't what was deemed useful for children by the consortium (I'm guessing!) and they realized they had a window of opportunity. If we think something is educational and could benefit kids we just share it - as they should have done. Schematic was released 6 months after the kickstarter, firmware is still not available, and any software or hardware developers like us who would have supported them for free if it was for a good cause were not provided with any information.
The codebug had/has a market in that it looks small enough to incorporate into some craft type applications. I think I saw an example of it being used as an electronic dice in a board game and inserted into birthday cards with a scrolling message. However if you only have one of them then that means as a child you have to destroy your most recent artistic creation in order to create the next.
The micro:bit looks like it has a nice feature in that it can grow with you a bit as there are the four options for programming straight off. A lot will still depend upon the supporting resources for it though. Back in the 80's the BBC did something similar with the BBC Micro which was hailed a success as they launched the machine alongside a number of television programmes and text services. However at the time it was very expensive, using it with a TV screen was painful (and often had to be fitted in between family TV viewing schedules), and back in those days there were no VCR's so if you missed the TV broadcast you had to write off for a transcript of the show etc. Some code was available on text services but not many TVs had text at the time, and painful to try and copy by hand if you didn't have the optional expensive teletext add-on box.
At the start, schools only had a relatively small number of BBC micros. The best use I saw of the BBC Micro in my school was when one of the Physics teachers incorporated it in the curriculum by connecting it up to experiments and used it to produce real time graphs of acceleration alongside the manual ticker tape process. The woodworking/metalworking department had one as well and the CNC software but no CNC mills and lathes to go with it. There however was virtually no associated content to use at home even if your parents did buy one. As a result, a lot turned into games machines.
The downside to the likes of the codebug and micro:bit though is that they are reliant upon host machines for programming.
