BBC Micro:bit computer now available to all for £13

#1

Post by neverminder » Tue, May 31, 2016, 11:41 AM UTC

BBC Micro:bit computer now available to all for £13
engadget.com

Re: BBC Micro:bit computer now available to all for £13

#2

Post by whiskers » Tue, May 31, 2016, 12:00 PM UTC

Now that the Raspberry Pi 3 has built-in Bluetooth the micro:bit is a really nice compliment to it for projects that want to use the LED matrix display, remote sensors, or the provided accelerometer/compass.

We definitely see the two platforms working hand in hand nicely for some interesting projects!

We're one of the launch re-sellers who are offering pre-order with shipping in late June: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/microbit

Re: BBC Micro:bit computer now available to all for £13

#3

Post by IshKebab » Tue, May 31, 2016, 12:20 PM UTC

Not a bad price compared to other nRF51 boards, but I wish they'd included a coin cell holder.

Btw the best way to program these (if you want to do it the 'real' way) is using Yotta.

http://yottadocs.mbed.com/tutorial/tutorial.html

You can get started really quickly:

1. Install yotta

2. Start->Run Yotta

3. mkdir mything

4. cd mything

5. yt init

6. Paste some code in source/main.cpp

7. yt target bbc-microbit-gcc

8. yt install ble

9. yt build

Then find a file called mything-combined.hex in the build directory and copy it to the mBed USB drive.

It's all very command-line based and Yotta is Python/CMake-based which is quite slow and very IDE-unfriendly. But it does work well.

Re: BBC Micro:bit computer now available to all for £13

#4

Post by nmeofthestate » Tue, May 31, 2016, 12:34 PM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #3

Not a bad price compared to other nRF51 boards, but I wish they'd included a coin cell holder. Btw the best way to program these (if you want to do it the 'real' way) is using Yotta. http://yottadocs.mbed.com/tutorial/tutorial.html You can get started really quickly: 1. Install yotta 2. Start->Run Yotta 3. mkdir mything 4. cd mything 5. yt init 6. Paste some code in source/main.cpp 7. yt target bbc-microbit-gcc 8. yt…

There's also the web-based mbed IDE that is arguably simpler for a lot of people than all that command-line stuff. Looks like microbit is supported as a platform. https://developer.mbed.org/platforms/Microbit/

Re: BBC Micro:bit computer now available to all for £13

#5

Post by arviewer » Tue, May 31, 2016, 12:35 PM UTC

Available for £13 when you order 90. So you pay more than £1000!

Re: BBC Micro:bit computer now available to all for £13

#6

Post by whiskers » Tue, May 31, 2016, 12:36 PM UTC

arviewer wrote: post #5

Available for £13 when you order 90. So you pay more than £1000!

Available for £13 when you order 1! https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/microbit

Re: BBC Micro:bit computer now available to all for £13

#7

Post by Already__Taken » Tue, May 31, 2016, 12:38 PM UTC

Espruino works nicely on these as micro python can't do Bluetooth on it.

Re: BBC Micro:bit computer now available to all for £13

#8

Post by pawadu » Tue, May 31, 2016, 12:42 PM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #3

Not a bad price compared to other nRF51 boards, but I wish they'd included a coin cell holder. Btw the best way to program these (if you want to do it the 'real' way) is using Yotta. http://yottadocs.mbed.com/tutorial/tutorial.html You can get started really quickly: 1. Install yotta 2. Start->Run Yotta 3. mkdir mything 4. cd mything 5. yt init 6. Paste some code in source/main.cpp 7. yt target bbc-microbit-gcc 8. yt…

I disagree. Getting started really really quickly would be

  1. sudo apt-get install gcc-arm-none-eabi
  2. make

Instead, we have this extreme tool-bloat where a tiny tiny executable is produced using python, python-setup, cmake, libffi, libssl, clang, pip and finally yotta in addition to GCC and binutils (which is really all you should need).

Can someone please explain to me this new trend of in-house tools and tool-bloat?

Re: BBC Micro:bit computer now available to all for £13

#9

Post by scoot » Tue, May 31, 2016, 12:52 PM UTC

"While the BBC micro:bit has Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) hardware it only has 16k of RAM. The BLE stack alone takes up 12k RAM which means there’s not enough room to (currently) run MicroPython.

Future versions of the device may come with 32k RAM which would be sufficient. However, until such time it’s highly unlikely MicroPython will support BLE." [1]

That's a shame. I mean, I know it can be accessed by programming the hardware directly, but for most of the kids receiving these that puts BLE out of reach, when remote sensor, remote control & mesh network type capabilities would have opened up another whole class of projects that these could have been used for.

Would another 16K of memory really have pushed the price out of range, or was this more a question of the hardware design being finalised before the software stack?

[1] http://microbit-micropython.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ble.htm...

Re: BBC Micro:bit computer now available to all for £13

#10

Post by amelius » Tue, May 31, 2016, 1:31 PM UTC

Nice comparison with Raspberry Pi 3 here:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/raspberry-pi-2-vs-bbc...

Their conclusion:

> As you can see, there really is no comparison between these two devices. If the Raspberry Pi 3 is a 'my first proper computer,' then the BBC Micro Bit teaches the raw building blocks of coding at the heart of it. It's even more fundamental.

> The Raspberry Pi 3 is a much more advanced and practically useful device, but if you or your kid is starting at the very beginning of your programming journey, the BBC Micro Bit looks hard to beat.