Is there any normal way to code for those or are they bound to those microsoft editors like presented on their website? Maybe even arduino compatible?
I would hate to spend money and yet another windows exclusive gadget.
BBC Micro:bit computer now available to all for £13
11–20 of 43 posts
Re: BBC Micro:bit computer now available to all for £13
#12"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 t…
That would increase the price significantly since they would need to move to nordicsemis new M4 devices. And yes, 16K RAM is pretty huge by segment standards.
Your best chance is if someone can optimize the BLE stack to use less RAM. After all, people have written ipv6 stacks that need a fraction of that.
Re: BBC Micro:bit computer now available to all for £13
#13Espruino works nicely on these as micro python can't do Bluetooth on it.
I'm not familiar with Espruino (love the form-factor of the pico though!), but this page [1] only mentions BLE in the context of programming the device. Are you sure it has a driver / library to support the micro:bit BLE?
Re: BBC Micro:bit computer now available to all for £13
#14They're currently available on eBay for ridiculous prices.
Re: BBC Micro:bit computer now available to all for £13
#15"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 t…
respectfully, that's missing the point.
The beauty of the BBC Micro is the stark hardware specification -- the limits are the point. That scarcity leads to different usage, different behavior, different learning patterns.
If one wants to go poking around with modern languages, multi-tier applications, color-coding IDEs, etc. there is no shortage of modern computers available.
But instead, if one wishes to learn the fundamentals of computing, and the joys of working around the limits to extract the most performance possible, I would argue the BBC Micro is a superior choice to modern systems inherently due to the low spec.
It was a mere 40 years ago that 16kbyte of RAM was a luxury item.
IIRC, Wozniak wrote Applesoft Basic interpreter in 2k for the Apple ][ ROMs. He lost the source, re-wrote it, and saved a few bytes.
Learning assembly was a necessity for the purpose of speed and efficiency (which are often inseparable). Understanding what's happening at a low level -- all the way down to the metal -- is key. Single thread. No real OS. Flat memory model, all addressable (anyone remember the fun of self-rewriting code? or direct-memory mapped graphics or I/O ?)
I've rambled enough. Hopefully I've made a point.
Re: BBC Micro:bit computer now available to all for £13
#16"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 t…
respectfully, that's missing the point. The beauty of the BBC Micro is the stark hardware specification -- the limits are the point. That scarcity leads to different usage, different behavior, different learning patterns. If one wants to go poking around with modern languages, multi-tier applications, color-coding IDEs, etc. there is no shortage of modern computers available. But instead, if one wishes to learn the f…
I remember small machines. A PDP11 got hung and the manager called me. I thought a bit, talked him through the debugger and got him to put in a jump to avoid a check. Hit RUN and back in business! We don't do things like that anymore.
Re: BBC Micro:bit computer now available to all for £13
#17This is staggeringly good news. My partner and I were bemoaning just a couple of months ago that kids weren't being taught enough coding in schools. We have a 15 year old family member coming to spend two weeks work experience at my software company next month and he has never written a single line of code. Given how in to computers this kid is, I feel somebody somewhere has let him down.
In the face of this problem the BBC and a bunch of commercial partners have effectively donated one million BBC micro:bits to every year 7 student in England and Wales. This means that there are now one million kids in the UK aged 11+ who at the very least understand that programming is a thing and with any luck have experimented with it.
My kid is only two but regardless I'm going to buy one of these now they're commercially available and see if I can get him to engage with it and me as we program it to do various things.
Again, this is a huge step forward for teaching kids to code...great news :) I'd love to hear if any other countries have launched similar strategies to get their children to understand programming.
Re: BBC Micro:bit computer now available to all for £13
#18"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 t…
respectfully, that's missing the point. The beauty of the BBC Micro is the stark hardware specification -- the limits are the point. That scarcity leads to different usage, different behavior, different learning patterns. If one wants to go poking around with modern languages, multi-tier applications, color-coding IDEs, etc. there is no shortage of modern computers available. But instead, if one wishes to learn the f…
> respectfully, that's missing the point.
On the contrary, it seems you have missed my point, or at least, nothing that follows that statement directly contradicts it.
Speaking of which, you state that the BBC micro:bit (the BBC Micro was a very different computer) is good for education, which I would certainly hope, since that's what it was designed for. However suggesting that teaching assembly language to 11 year olds is a good way to encourage them to explore and engage with the platform is missing the point (of the micro:bit).
Re: BBC Micro:bit computer now available to all for £13
#19Is there any normal way to code for those or are they bound to those microsoft editors like presented on their website? Maybe even arduino compatible? I would hate to spend money and yet another windows exclusive gadget.
They're not microsoft editors, they're web editors. But you can also use micropython, try https://github.com/ntoll/mu
Gives you a REPL, but you lose Bluetooth
Re: BBC Micro:bit computer now available to all for £13
#20Its worth looking at the website https://www.microbit.co.uk/create-code to see how it can be coded. You can choose Python and JavaScript, looks like when you download it downloads a binary which you run.
This is very different to what we're used to. For tiny programs it is great, anything non-trivial might be difficult to debug.