KS0456 Keyestudio Honeycomb Smart Wearable Coding Kit for Micro:bit
Kit Guide
The BBC micro:bit is a tiny programmable computer designed to make learning and teaching easy and fun! This embedded board has a Bluetooth, USB interface, accelerometer, compass, light and temperature sensors, 5x5 LED matrix, buttons, and edge connectors for accessories.
Keyestudio Honeycomb Smart wearable Kit for Micro:bit is designed for people who is at the door step of learning electric circuit and programming knowledge.
The kit has provided some basic electronic modules like RGB LED, button, buzzer, TEMT6000 light module and more. You can not only learn basic knowledge of these modules, but also use it to design circuit.
With the help of Micro:bit programming technique, your circuit becomes more animated. Micro:bit Starter kit can help you enter a wonderful of electronic world.
Kit List
micro:bit Driver Installation
Next, let’s install the driver for micro:bit main board.
1) First of all, connect the micro:bit to your computer using a USB cable.
2)Then, double click the driver software to install it. Here you can click the icon below to download it.
3) After that, click Next to continue the installation.
4) Wait the driver installing finished.
5) Wait the driver installing finished.
6) Driver installation completed, then you can right click the “Computer” —> “Properties”—> “Device Manager”.
You can check the detailed Ports information shown as below.
micro:bit Example Use
Step 1: Connect It
Connect the micro:bit to your computer via a micro USB cable. Your micro:bit will show up on your computer as a drive called 'MICROBIT'.
Step 2: Program It
Using micro bit MakeCode Block editor https://makecode.microbit.org/, write your first micro:bit code.
You can drag and drop some example blocks and try your program on the Simulator in the Javascript Blocks Editor, like in the image below.
Click the JavaScript, you can see the corresponding program code. Shown as below figure.
Step 3: Download It
Click the Download button in the editor. This will download a 'hex' file, which is a compact format of your program that your micro:bit can read.
Here you can name the project as LED1, then click “Save”. Shown below.
Once the hex file has downloaded, copy it to your micro:bit just like copying a file to a USB drive. On Windows find the microbit-LED1 file, you can right click and choose "Send To→MICROBIT."
Step 4: Play It
The micro:bit will pause and the yellow 5*5 LED on the back of the micro:bit will display the images while your code is programmed.
You can power it using USB cable or battery. The battery holder need to connect two 1.5V AA batteries. Shown below.
micro:bit Pins
Before getting started with the following projects, first need to figure out each pin of micro:bit main board. Please refer to the reference diagram shown below.
The BBC micro:bit has 25 external connections on the edge connector of the board, which we refer to as ‘pins’. The edge connector is the grey area on the right side of the figure above. There are five large pins, that are also connected to holes in the board labelled: 0, 1, 2, 3V, and GND. And along the same edge, there are 20 small pins that you can use when plugging the BBC micro:bit into an edge connector.
Note that it read from the BBC micro:bit official website. More reference you can click the link below:
BBC micro bit Pins: http://microbit.org/guide/hardware/pins/
BBC micro:bit website: http://microbit.org/
Micro bit MakeCode Block Editor: https://makecode.microbit.org/
Meet micro:bit starter programming: http://microbit.org/guide/
BBC micro:bit Features Guide: http://microbit.org/guide/features/
BBC micro:bit Safety Warnings: http://microbit.org/guide/features/
BBC micro:bit Quick Start Guide: http://microbit.org/guide/quick/
Getting Started with Micro:bit Projects
The BBC micro:bit is a tiny programmable computer designed to make learning and teaching easy and fun!
Combine the micro:bit main board, keyestudio Edge Connector IO Breakout Board for micro:bit, and other sensor modules to make your own micro:bit projects. Looking to discover more coding projects for micro:bit.
Project 1: Hello
Overview
This project is very simple. You can use only a micro:bit main board and a USB cable to display the “Hello!”.
This is an entry experiment for you to enter the programming world of micro:bit.
Components:
- Micro:bit main board*1
- USB cable*1
Pre-Test:
So let's test our micro:bit before programming it. There are two ways to test your micro:bit.
- 1.via USB cable: You can test your micro:bit just to see if it is working fine or not. To do so connect your micro:bit to your computer via USB cable and wait for a second your micro:bit will display "HELLO" by blinking LEDs. If it does, then it is working fine.
- 2.via Battery Connector: Insert batteries into battery box and connect your micro:bit via power pins and then see if it's displaying "HELLO". If it does, then it is working fine.
Coding
So now let's move to coding. Let us see how we can code and display "Hello" manually. Below are some steps to follow.
1. Open the https://makecode.micro:bit.org/#editor to write your code.
Microsoft MakeCode is actually a platform that allows us to code for a micro:bit, and also provides an interactive simulator where we can debug and run our code, and will be able to see what to expect out right there on the site.
Go to MakeCode and choose My Projects and click on New Projects.
After this, you will see the following screen. As we can see that there is one micro:bit simulator, which will show the output instantly when we will finish writing our code.
2.Tools
We can see that there are different tools to program the micro:bit just next to simulator. It is quite easy to program by dragging and dropping the blocks, and if you want to see the codes behind, then you can click on JavaScript and it will display JavaScript code there in IDE.
3.Display "Hello,world!"
Let's get started and display "Hello, KEYESTUDIO!" on our micro:bit. To do so, you just need to go to Basic and scroll down to see an on start block.
Now drag and drop, and go to Led and click more to drag the block led enable(True) out;
And again go to Basic and search for the show string <hello> block. That's all; now you will see HELLO on your simulator.
After completing this step micro:bit will restart itself and run the code. It will display "HELLO" there on the simulator. Quite easy? Yeah, quite easy. So let's move on and code for the rest.
Now drag and drop, and again go to Basic and search for the show string <hello> block; change the word to KEYESTUDIO and add a pause block in milliseconds.
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That's all for the coding part.
Name and download your program that you have written.
Run Code on Micro:bit
Now let us see how to run our code on the actual Micro:bit.
- Plug in the Micro:bit to a computer via USB.
- After plugging in, you should see Micro:bit drive on your computer.
Now go to your download folder and right-click to send the downloaded microbit Hex file to your micro:bit main board.
Now wait for a second for Micro:bit to restart, and it will start displaying output automatically.
Project 2: Buttons
Overview
The micro:bit main board comes with 3 buttons. One for reset; button A and B are used as control button. The micro:bit has 25 individually-programmable LEDs, allowing you to display text, numbers, and images.
In this project, we are going to use the two built-in buttons to make the LED matrix showing the patterns.
There are two test codes for you. One is without loop function; the other is with loop function.
Hardware Components:
- Micro:bit main board*1
- USB cable*1
Coding
So now let's move to coding. Let us see how we can code and display different icons via button control. Below are some steps to follow.
Open the https://makecode.micro:bit.org/#editor to write your code.
Microsoft MakeCode is actually a platform that allows us to code for a micro:bit, and also provides an interactive simulator where we can debug and run our code, and will be able to see what to expect out right there on the site.
Go to MakeCode and choose My Projects and click on New Projects.
If you want to see the codes behind, then you can click on JavaScript and it will display JavaScript code there in IDE.
LED Display
Let's get started and display different icons on our micro:bit. To do so, you just need to go to Basic and scroll down to see an on start block.
Now drag and drop, and go to Led and click more to drag the block led enable(false) out; choose true.
On the micro:bit main board, we can see the button A and B. Now we set the buttons to make the led matrix show different icons.
Now go to input, drag and drop the block on button()pressed; and duplicate it twice. Separately change the button to button A, B, A+B.
And again go to Basic and search for the show leds block; duplicate the block twice and drag these blocks into the button block you just made.
You can show different icons as you like by drawing the leds.
After completing this step micro:bit will restart itself and run the code. It will display icons on the simulator. Quite easy? Yeah, quite easy. So let's move on and name and download the program you’ve written.
Run Code on Micro:bit
Downloaded well the code, connect the micro:bit to your computer with a micro USB cable. You can right-click the microbit HEX file to send to your micro:bit main board. See what will show on micro:bit.
Code 1:
Furthermore, you can change to use the forever block and logic conditionals to make the same function.
Go to the Basic and scroll down to see a forever block. Now drag and drop, and go to Logic and search for if (true) then...block. Drag this block into forever block.
Go to input, drag and drop the block button () is pressed to replace the (true). And again go to Basic and search for the show leds block; change the led display as you want. We draw a big heart shape.
So let's move on and can duplicate this whole block twice. Just change the button and leds show.
Go to finish the code by yourself. After that, download and send the microbit hex file to your micro:bit main board. See what result it will make.
Code 2:
Result Done sending the code 1 or code 2 to micro:bit. Press down the button A, LED matrix on the micro:bit main board will show a heart shape icon.
Press the button B, LED matrix will show a diamond shape icon.
Press the button A and B at the same time, LED matrix shows another different icon.