New release of MIT AppInventor supports BBC micro:bit and Arduino101

Great stuff Neil - if you could share the tutorials here we'd love to see and share them.

Maybe you could clear this up for me. The Arduino 101 isn't available right now on element14, and is a discontinued product on Sparkfun, (they do have Arduino 101 Industrial). Now why in the world have they developed for what seems to be a discontinued product?  Are American schools inundated with Arduino 101 boards? BBC micro:bit is easier to understand, from what I've seen they can be bought at half the price at retail, It's clearly designed for IoT educational purposes. Has the MIT program already invested a lot of work in Arduino? Why not ArduinoUNOs or other Arduino boards with WIFI/Bluetooth hats/expansion boards? I don't get what seems to be an unnecessary duplication of effort.

Hi Chris,

Arduino 101 relied on a module from Intel, called Curie. However, it was discontinued by Intel around July of last year (and not many people were notified until it had occurred).

The "Arduino Industrial 101" is a very different board to the "Arduino 101", the so-called industrial version doesn't use the Curie module.

The micro:bit is still an actively shipping/supported board.

Hi Chris

I can't comment on the original decision of MIT to work with the now discontinued Arduino 101, as  I'm not involved with MIT.

Indeed, I wasn't aware that the Arduino 101 had been discontinued (thanks shabaz for that update).  My own interest is in using App Inventor with the BBC micro:bit

To give you a little history: My original post was June 2017 - over a year ago. I first became involved with App Inventor and BLE, with the micro:bit, in about November 2016 - at this time MIT were already using Arduino 101 as their target device and had been doing so for some time - at least 6 months from memory.

I hope this clarifies things.

Neil

Hi Neil,

I am encouraged to read your post.

I've a project underway hoping to get an AI2 app to control a Micro:Bit peripheral over BLE.

In order to make an 'intelligent' cordless drill - which will hopefully save my wrists from RSI !  A hazard for a professional bicycle wheel builder.

I'm hoping you might help direct my next steps forward...

I've got a basic Android app built using BluetoothLE  extension version 20181124  which finds the Espruino MicroBit successfully and connects.

The Micro:Bit returns a list of supported services. Six items in the list with hexadecimal names eg    00001800-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb Unknown Service.

That is as far as i have got at the AI2 end.

At the Micro:Bit end, I need code to toggle an I/O pin after 'n' revolutions of the drill chuck (tcrt5000 optical sensor and edge counting) where 'n' is supplied / updated by the Android app.

Haven't written it yet but confident I can. I had something similar working on the RasPi as a standalone.

I'm just a bit lost with the BLE comms

Q.  Is it true that the Bluetooth stack uses up too much memory to co-exist with Python ?

Thus I'm expecting to use Espruino on the Micro:Bit but I'm more familiar with Python.

Q.  Do i need to get techy with GATT services and characteristics?

regards,

Greg

Hi gregconti  good to hear from you.

I see you are a very new member; out of interest, did you find this thread with a simple search on the internet? The reason I ask is because there have been some discussions here about the "visibility" of our postings.

It sounds like a very interesting project you are working on and I look forward to reading more about it.

I'm not familiar with the Espruino product, but I imagine it will do the job for you - I've only ever used the Microsoft makecode editor - https://makecode.microbit.org/#editor

As I understand things, there is no way that the Bluetooth stack and micro-python can coexist on the micro:bit - pity!

You shouldn't need to worry about the UUIDs for the BLE services and their corresponding Characteristics. They are nearly all handled (and hidden from you!) in the various micro:bit specific features of BluetoothLE  extension version 20181124 (which is the latest version!):

I assume you've looked here for App Inventor  BLE and micro:bit -  MIT App Inventor + Internet of Things If not, all the documentation is there and there are some very useful examples and tutorials

The message "00001800-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb Unknown Service" represents the Generic Access Service, which has 3 characteristics: Device Name, Appearance and Peripheral Preferred Connection Parameters. These are not handled by App Inventor extension.

If you want to see the BLE Services which are handled, you need to start them in the micro:bit code - look here for the details:

http://iot.appinventor.mit.edu/#/microbit/microbitintro

So finally, I don't think you will need to get techy with GATT services and characteristics!

I hope this helps

Best wishes - and let us know how you get on by posting a blog

Neil

Hi Neil,

I have been looking around google but could not find answer, posting it here with hope that you could help me.

I have been trying to connect microbit with app inventor for accelerometer services. I could see microbit in app inventor, able to connect it but app is not able to receive any accelerometer data. Error I get is that data is not published by microbit. I have tried to connect microbit with bittysoftware app and it shows accelerometer data so I think microbit is working fine. I tried to print bluetooth message to see if it has received any data, nothing there too.

I am stuck with this problem. Then I tried temperature also but same problem, same with magnetometer.

Summary : Bluetooth device (microbit) is found, app able to connect with microbit BLE but not able to receive any data.

Please suggest / advice.

thanks

Archit

Hi archit.jain. Welcome to element 14

I assume that you have started the accelerometer service on the micro:bit......

If you have and you can see that it is active, say,by using nRF connect, then the problem will be in your App Inventor code. If you post this as a new question, I will do my best to help you.

Neil

Thanks Neil. I have started accelerometer services. I will use nRF and re-check. Thanks again. I will post the outcome and queries as a new question.

Regards

Archit

Hi Neil, I have started new post but could not figure out how to tag you there. Appreciate if you can help.

https://www.element14.com/community/message/276199/l/microbit-not-able-to-start-accelerometer-services#276199