First Look at the BBC micro:bit

First look at the BBCs single board computer which is being given to all 11-year olds in the UK.

[andrewtimms]

It would be helpful to know the date when the school children will receive theirs so I can buy one on Ebay the week following.

[EinerDerAnderen]

An accelerometer is indeed just for measuring translational accelerations. For measuring angular rates you would need a gyroscope. There are cases where both of these two inertial measurement units have been combined in one device, but usually you would realize them as two dedicated MEMS structures.

[Hugatry]

Brilliant device and idea. Great video!

We had electronics as a part of shop class at age of 15 or so. Teacher gave us PCBs and components for an astable multivibrator based horn and told us "You've seen where the soldering irons are". If there was a problem, teacher's only solution was "Either you didn't follow the instructions or soldering isn't good enogh. Go do something about it.". Sure thing, soldering wasn't good enough because teacher didn't tell us how to solder. Out of 20 kids, maybe one or two accidentally made few decent solder joints. Everyone had to do some resoldering because either the device didn't work at all, or malfunctioned.

That doesn't really encourage kids to start playing with electronics, unlike that micro:bit kit! Such a small board, but it has many things kids can play with even without adding any extra hardware. Included tutorials and that block programming thingy seems like perfect way to begin learning programming.

[saturntony]

That is the greatest thing that can be done for young kids....so cool!

[nThanksForAllTheFish]

Julian, the accelerometer when it's not being jerked around will measure the magnitude of gravity vector relative to it's 3 orthogonal sensing axes. So, each waveform should read between +1g to -1g when the board is rotated in a way that causes that axis to point from up to down. A 3-axis gyro on the other hand would measure rate of rotation in say yaw, pitch and roll. Forgive me if you already know this.

[AdamWelchUK]

It's a great device and a well meaning initiative. However unfortunately the distribution and supply to schools hasn't lived up to expectation. In my own school we haven't seen the device as yet and the year is quickly coming to an end - and planning for next years curriculum is almost complete as well. :-(

[DavidWatts]

I think the key factor here for kids will be them being able to interact with their micro:bit using their phones. I have fond memories of the BBC Micro and I hope in the years to come kids will look back and feel the same about the BBC micro:bit.

[MishuuuTheWah]

this is really cool i wish i was a kid again haha. i live in Canada and i wish we could introduce this to the schools here. we were experimenting with drone delivery here for amazon in the okanagan. but this would be amazing, so jealous.

[TaiViinikka]

Blockly and Scratch are the real winners here. These languages function like Lego does for structural engineering. Judging from my 8 year old, the barriers to programming language are about syntax. Kids can quite easily understand loops, conditionality, variables -- the problem (at first) is debugging syntax errors. Once you get past "at first, " you're already hooked.

I hope the microbit will serve as a physical invitation for kids to start trying stuff with the block-oriented languages.

[Educs]

Nice video Julian. I just got mine! In my opinion, this little board is fantastic for people just starting to program!

[HPDecals]

Hello Julian, I just want to thank you for your great electronics videos. You have actually inspired me to get back into (micro)electronics Your postbag videos are not only very entertaining but also provide great training for learning the different components on the circuit boards and how they are suppose to behave and interact in a circuit. It is much easier for me to learn like this versus out of a book. So thanks again and keep up the great work!

[TheCrawler]

Great video. I can just see the headlines now, "Student uses a micro:bit to hack into the BBC computer center" :)

[ConexSpot]

This was an excellent demonstration. Thank you.

[dumle]

It's an accelerometer. It meassures g forces, not movement. in resting, there'll be 1g down, and 0 g on the two horizontal axis. Say Z is vertical, and X and Y is the horizontal planes. The red and green lines reacted, because you rotated those axis towards the gravity, so they read more.

[Motorman]

Every 11 year old? Surely the vast majority of these will end up in the bin or in the back of drawers, why not make them available for anyone from 10-14 (for example) who applies for one? That would get more of them into the hands of people who actually want them without so much waste.

[BernhardHofmann]

The problem my son had with scratch (a block editor) is that the program quickly becomes unwieldy as it grows. Text based code really isn't that much more difficult and it has the benefit of being comparable with previous versions of the code (you are using source control aren't you). What might be nice is something that produces the text code from the block sketches so that simple sketches can be understood in text and then taken further.

[pcuser]

Just as in the eighties with the Acorn BBC micro. Great and fast computer. In these day its a little bit smaller.

[boltactionpiano]

Accelerometers measure acceleration. Gravity causes acceleration and so that is why it measures you rotating it, it's affecting each of the 3 axis (each line) differently. A gyroscopic sensor is what you were testing. If you shake it in each axis., that will move each line.

[maicod]

cool board and good incentive to give it to all UK kids aged 11. From what I can see it works more as an Arduino with built in LED matrix than a Raspberry PI. Also very nice block-program-language !

[runnerup]

The companies producing the parts for these units have the potential to make so much moneyyy. I should start an initiative like this in the US