New
#441
Yes its a BBC Micro-Bit. I've done a few things. A micro pet my grand kids had fun with. A happy birthday message with a cake on the led matrix and music through a speaker. Presently playing around with servo's. It is very Arduino like, although I have never owned an Arduino. I write my code in micro python, then it's converted to hex by the editor. To change what it does you just drag and drop your hex file to it via USB. It shows up like a thumb drive as external media. I bought the second one to give to my grand kids to play with and maybe learn some coding. I need one for my self to help sort out what they are doing. And have a bit of fun myself.
The first one was a gift for helping out on a forum. They asked me if I wanted anything shiny "within reason" for helping out on the forums. I had been seeing stuff about the Micro Bit and decided why not give it a try. I "think" the learning curve is a little less than say an Arduino, and lots of kid oriented stuff already out there for it. Kind of like the Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi will do more, but requires more learning IMHO to use it. We'll see how it goes? I haven't given it to the grand kids just yet. Gearing up some stuff first. I bought a breakout board that plugs into a solderless bread board so they can just plug stuff in and use jumper wires etc. I want to do a few simple things up for them first to spark an interest. Some blinking LED's and some sounds, maybe a servo waiving a paper flag.
Anyway, just thought I'd show the other side of the PC coin. It doesn't have to be multi core with gigs of RAM to be fun to play with, IMHO anyway. It all depends on what you want to do with said device. I hadn't heard of Python before I bought my first Raspberry Pi. Now I'm actually having a lot of fun programing with it and making my own very personalised devices. I'm still no Python expert, more like a professional armature, lol.
You are absolutely correct! It's all about what your requirements are, not how many cores etc...
It would be pointless to use a $10000 full blown gaming PC for just blinking a few leds and playing Jingle Bells at Christmas, Wouldn't it.
All different devices has their place. And I think hardware like an Arduino, RPi or similar are very important tools today and should not be ignored.
Small size and low power requirements have their advantages. These devices are great for embedded projects and or portable battery powered projects. One nice thing about Arduino's and the Micro Bit is, if the power fails, no big deal. Nothing gets corrupted. When the power comes back on, they just start back up and do what you programed them to do.
A shot of my new monitor taken with my crappy iphone
Just can`t seem to get it to run at 165Hz, it just won`t stick.
Last edited by AddRAM; 22 Mar 2018 at 07:20.