The students of the Cambourne Electronics and Robotics Club (CERC) were excited to win the element14 Summer Challenge and immediately got started with the BBC Micro:bits and the Kitronik Inventory kit. CERC conducted two sessions on Sunday 18th August 2019 with the beginner and the advanced batch. Each batch had 20 students in the age group of 7-14years.
The first project was to make a simple project with a buzzer that was connected to the pin P0 and GND (0V) using the Kitronik kit and using the Radio link of the Micro:bit. The children were asked to work in a pair with one programming for the transmitter and the other with the receiver. The transmitter transmitted a unique code (“77”) when the button A was pressed and (“88”) when the button B was pressed. The receiver on receiving “77” played “birthday” tune and on receiving “88” played “dadadum” tune.
The beginners batch used Makecode for programming. The following are the codes for the transmitter and receiver:
An important point emphasized was that multiple groups can work simultaneously by having different radio channel numbers. The concepts of radio channels for broadcast and unicast were also explained. The group was then asked to extend the project with A+B button pressed to play a different tune.
The advanced group conducted the same project but used Micro:Python for programming. The programs for transmitter and receiver are:
Important points to note are:
- Use import radio to get all the functions required for radio link
- Radio on command and in radio.config use group rather than channel
- Transmit and receive data is string “77” and “88” rather than numbers.
Some pictures of the session:
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