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!
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.
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.
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.
This is great. It would be brilliant if you could do a series of teaching tutorials for parents who want to teach their children programming the micro:bit. I don't think anybody else has done that yet.
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 !
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.
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. :-(
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.
That kids will look back on this and think it was worthwhile. Seems like a pointless waste of our money when they could be using something more mainstream.
It's a regular 3-way accelerometer, it measures acceleration in X, Y and Z plane, that means left-right, forward-backward and up-down. If you lift it rapidly you should see the blue line go down (or maybe up) and then if you move it down quickly it goes the other way, and you should stop the movement slowly.
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.
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.
Wow, I've heard of this lil dev board, but I was completely unaware that they're giving them free to EVERY kid in the country, that's incredible! Good on them, that is actually a great initiative, and with the ages these days being less-unfavorable to hackers/makers/"geeks" than they used to be, the kids might actually be interested in this thing, and actually USE it! Good times, for sure. Any estimates on how many units that will take to cover every kid in the UK?
Hi, love your videos, all very informative. As a science teacher across the pond, is there a way that my school could purchase these, along with the teacher manual? As an aside, your "Arduino under $5" video prompted me to do the same next semester with my class. Regards from NY.
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.
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.
its an accelerometer, it only reads translations not rotations, you'll notice whenever you are tilting the device 2 bars are going because there is a change in 2 axis. A bit of trig between readings of 2 axis and you can use an accelerometer for reading angles of course, but otherwise you appear to be treating it as a gyroscope.
That block editor is _very_ reminiscent of the old Lego Mindstorms RIS editor software :D It's a good tool to rapidly get shit done. Is that a Triforce on the BBC manual? And of course the ask you _really_ should be questioning yourself; do you need a TV license to use one of these? (Due, of course, to the unique way in which the BBC is funded :P )
The Pi seems more advanced with more possibilities. I was planning on getting one of these but seeing this makes me wonder what the advantage would be over the pi I already have, certainly this is geared towards beginners so you probably don't get very low level acces, which is just plain boring.
Could you please show us all of your power banks in a video? I have burned my Xiaomi 10400mah one, so I'm looking for an replacement. I'll just deasemble the Xiaomi one, and use the batteries in another one. But it took me wery long to find, (and watch) some of your power bank reviews or postbags. Thank you for reading this comment.
Really looking forward to you doing more on the micro:bit. Mine's on order. The block editor is the same as "Scratch", the MIT project for the young. Here's their "Maze" program demo which demonstrates it's similarity. scratch.mit.edu/projects/10128431/#editor
They need something they have control over i guess, easier to support it to have their own thing than to try and promote someone elses product and just make a kid friendly IDE for it.
That was my first thought, to be honest, but from what Julian was saying - they wanted something bluetooth / Android / iphone compatible that didn't require a USB connection to a PC. As far as I can tell - the only Arduino board that might have fitted the bill was the old (and dead) ArduinoBT from 2006. That said, if you're gonna design a proprietary board anyway they could have mashed an HC-05 onto a pro-mini somehow.
A very nice idea, however perhaps a PI, or Arduino would have been better choices. Or with the experiance gained with the BBC mod B, a computer with keyboard and screen even better still. I know I am old fashioned and cost is a factor.So good luck BBC micro:bit I hope you encourage as many youngsters as did the model B.
I fixed all my crocodile clamps by sliding off the rubber sleeve, adding a bit of scotch magic tape around the bare clamp and sliding the sleeve back on.
Can't believe you've not seen block programming before. The first programming I did was Scratch in school. It can make rather basic games and such, but uses all block programming. I think they are borrowing code from scratch as the blocs look exactly like the scratch ones.
I went from BASIC to assembly language programming in the 80s. Then to PIC assembly language in the 90s. A bit of JavaScript, Java and PHP in the 00s. Then to C on the Arduino this decade.
I realy don't like BlueTooth, because the range is crap. Even my 6 meters long living room is too much for it... Free air, connection lost. WTF? Adhoc WiFi please!
Hard to tell how this will create "a nation of programmers". I was writing crappy BASIC programs on the BBC Micro at school when I was six or seven. Not because the school made me do it, but because I found it interesting. I got some Usborne books from the library and gave it a go. It annoyed me that the teachers forced me to go into the playground to "play" when I'd rather stay in the classroom and mess about with computers. Anyway, reminiscing aside, I think it's a good thing, and I'm glad the comments to this video aren't full of nonsense like "they should have just given them arduino/raspberry pi/whatever". Time will tell if it actually generates some interest in writing software.
PiZero would have been a better cheap gift to the kids. But we shouldn't snipe at Santa. I do remember wishing I had a phone (landline) when I was a kid. Now it looks like - No computer/phone, then you have a "flashy thing". Maybe you can write code by post in that event.... Micro:bit BBC TV Wood Lane London W12 8QT
that 13 pound price tag is way to much... hey Julian do you know if they are planning to provide with schools of other countries a bit cheaply than that price tag?
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.
I suspect the reason for distributing them to everyone is to give all children some basic understanding of coding, and to inspire some of those that currently have no interest(or who do not know they might find it interesting), and so would never apply if it was by application only, to get into coding.
indeed! Julian would have had to turn it on its side and then rotate around the formerly vertical axis (now horizontal) and he'd have seen gravity's effect on the third line.
Well, rotation creates g's as well as long if the center of rotation is not on the accelerometer. Besides movement, it should be able to measure gravity as well, so you can find out the angles relative to earth.
There are tons of programming programs that use the block programming like Scratch and googles App Inventor. I think children should be pushed towards more actual coding. I never got to do this kind of stuff in secondary school and I've only just got to college!
Goodness available for £13 The pi Zero and if add a few peripherals can come in under budget. I understand is a full solution but when backed by the BBC with a major £100 million pound and acknowledged IT project fail behind them does make me wonder a little "BIT"
Awesome! You can also code the bbc micro:bit with the open-source #OpenRoberta Editor: which includes the micro:bit and other microboards and robots lab.open-roberta.org
I don't understand the reasoning behind using the edge connector at all - unless of course you spend more for the breakout... Why not use the regular .1 pins so common on basically every other SBC out there - - they work fine...
The BBC do all sorts of education including TV programs and special projects like this one. In 1982 they produced an educational computer for schools. I played my first game of "Elite" on one; when I should have been working... But it inspired me to do computing for a living.
Not really. One of the 6 core objectives of the BBC's remit is to promote education and learning and another is to 'stimulate creativity'. I think the micro:bit falls squarely in that wheelhouse.
The BBC has a long tradition of educating the young. They had a computer out probably twenty years ago that was sold cheaply to schools. You have to remember that both the Beeb and the schools (most of them anyway) are run by the state, hence educate as many as young as possible.
