Raspberry Pi, PiTrol and micro:bit on Thursday

[Peter Lister]

Nevil Hunt, who was at the Science Oxford event of Dec2 with his PiTrol
game controller for the RPi (and other fun things) has just emailed me
to say he'll be along on Thursday and... he's bringing along a
micro:bit. (I did ask Nevil to last weeks Raspberry Jam, but he couldn't
make it).

The micro:bit is an mbed based wearable microcontroller gadget with LEDs
and every year 7 kid (1st year secondary in old money) in the UK is
going to be given one courtesy of the BBC's Make it Digital project, so
there'll be a huge number of them around very shortly, hopefully
accompanied by interested kids.

All the best,
Peter

[Nick Kolpin]

I'm not sure whether I can get down to the space on Thursday, but I'm particularly interested in the micro:bit. Given that they'll be rolling out at schools soon I expect there'll be some need for volunteers to help out with them in schools. There was some mention of micro:bit training on the SO STEM ambassador list, but I haven't heard anything about it since expressing some interest. In case I am not around on Thursday (which seems likely), if you could find out the following I'd be grateful:

* How are the kids expected to program the micro:bit? Are they using the classic mbed online IDE, yotta, some specific offline IDE?

* How did he get his hands on one?

* I've seen a pinout for the edge connector, but not a technical drawing, if we could get some measurements of the pin sizes it'd be useful for making connecting devices. Is there a specified/suggested connector?

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Oxford Hackspace" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to oxford-hackspa...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send an email to oxford-h...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/oxford-hackspace.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Peter Lister]

On 16/12/15 08:18, Nick Kolpin wrote:
> I'm not sure whether I can get down to the space on Thursday, but I'm
> particularly interested in the micro:bit. Given that they'll be
> rolling out at schools soon I expect there'll be some need for
> volunteers to help out with them in schools. There was some mention of
> micro:bit training on the SO STEM ambassador list, but I haven't heard
> anything about it since expressing some interest. In case I am not
> around on Thursday (which seems likely), if you could find out the
> following I'd be grateful:

I can answer a couple of these:

> * How are the kids expected to program the micro:bit? Are they using
> the classic mbed online IDE, yotta, some specific offline IDE?

Have you looked at https://www.microbit.co.uk/ recently? Follow some
links, look at some examples: I was fiddling with some of these last night.

> * How did he get his hands on one?

He's working for the organisation in some capacity.

> * I've seen a pinout for the edge connector, but not a technical
> drawing, if we could get some measurements of the pin sizes it'd be
> useful for making connecting devices. Is there a specified/suggested
> connector?

That's a good question, I'll pass it on.

All the best,
Peter

[James Harrison]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 16/12/2015 08:18, Nick Kolpin wrote:
> I'm not sure whether I can get down to the space on Thursday, but
> I'm particularly interested in the micro:bit. Given that they'll be
> rolling out at schools soon I expect there'll be some need for
> volunteers to help out with them in schools. There was some mention
> of micro:bit training on the SO STEM ambassador list, but I haven't
> heard anything about it since expressing some interest. In case I
> am not around on Thursday (which seems likely), if you could find
> out the following I'd be grateful:
>
> * How are the kids expected to program the micro:bit? Are they
> using the classic mbed online IDE, yotta, some specific offline
> IDE? * How did he get his hands on one? * I've seen a pinout for
> the edge connector, but not a technical drawing, if we could get
> some measurements of the pin sizes it'd be useful for making
> connecting devices. Is there a specified/suggested connector?

https://www.microbit.co.uk/device has some basic information - it's an
online IDE, and I'm not sure that there's a physical technical drawing
a vailable in the public domain but
https://developer.mbed.org/platforms/Microbit/#firmware has a bunch of
information including a pinout and spec. It's not a standard
connector, as far as I know.

- --
Cheers,
James Harrison
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.17 (MingW32)
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=+Khm
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[Peter Lister]

Hello all,

To better answer Nick's questions, after Nevil's visit on Thursday...

* How are the kids expected to program the micro:bit? Are they using the classic mbed online IDE, yotta, some specific offline IDE?

Yes, it's via the various things at https://www.microbit.co.uk/ - you have to be connected to the net to use these. The normal mbed environment should also work, with the micro:bit profile there. The dev environments have emulators, which can even be virtually shaken and which will send "sensor" infor the code.

* How did he get his hands on one?

He's developing add-ons for Kitronik.

* I've seen a pinout for the edge connector, but not a technical drawing, if we could get some measurements of the pin sizes it'd be useful for making connecting devices. Is there a specified/suggested connector?

Kitronik have a breakout board kit. It looks to me like it's a fairly ordinary edge connector, and that the "wide" pins on the micro:bit just come out duplicated on some of the pins in the connector.

All the best,
Peter

[Ben Ward]

(On phone so no editing and I'm top posting)

Note about the connector from Lawrence Archard who was involved in the development:

> It's intended to mate with one side of
> an 80-way 1/20-inch pitch (0.127mm)
> connector - or a single-sided 40-way if
> you can find/make one - but there's
> not one specifically recommended.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Oxford Hackspace" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to oxford-hackspa...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to oxford-h...@googlegroups.com.

[IzziMear]

Nick I think you are right - there will definitely be a need for volunteers! Unfortunately you won't have heard anything from the SO STEM Ambassador list because STEMNET who are supposed to be supplying micro:bits for STEM Ambassadors haven't sent any out yet. If/when SO gets any I'm happy to bring it down one evening if people want another look. The online emulator is pretty good and has a few editors.

[Peter Lister]

On 21/12/15 11:13, IzziMear wrote:
> Nick I think you are right - there will definitely be a need for
> volunteers! Unfortunately you won't have heard anything from the SO
> STEM Ambassador list because STEMNET who are supposed to be supplying
> micro:bits for STEM Ambassadors haven't sent any out yet. If/when SO
> gets any I'm happy to bring it down one evening if people want another
> look. The online emulator is pretty good and has a few editors.

Izzi, the STEM Ambassadors' Friday email has just invited me to an Jan
4th in the SO classroom... I'm planning to come along: not to find out
more about the m:b, but talk to folk about what they're planning to do
when these things hit the streets. I'd also like to see the reactions of
some teachers/volunteers who aren't used to Arduinos etc... might be
interesting :-)

Will this be one-person-demoing-their-one-micro:bit, as Nevil did last
Thursday?

Peter