Updated BBC micro:bit

Amazing new little device, and with it&#x27;s much more powerful MCU (nRF52-series Cortex-M4 rather than the nRF51 Cortex-M0+) with 8x the RAM you can now even run small Machine Learning algorithms on it. Here it&#x27;s responding to my voice: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=fNSKWdIxh8o&amp;feature=emb_title" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=fNSKWdIxh8o&amp;feature=emb_titl...</a>

Is this achieving the goals of getting computing power into hands of kids ? I know they gave away a million a year or two ago, but my kids were more interested in raspberry pi as a platform - the micro-bit just kind of did not have the ... marketing ? appeal ? obvious way in ?<p>I like the idea - I can see some kind of path to free&#x2F;open IoT devices and some standardisation. But ... is tehre some call home feature that says &#x27;I have been turned on 5 times&#x27;?<p>Is this effective ?<p>I know I sound like an old moaner - it just is an important area - how do we measure if we are succeeding?

Cool! Refreshing with new hardware capabilities, and it seems they thought it through with the addition of a universal (yeah ...) hex format to support both v1 and v2 platforms from a single file.<p>The new nRF52833 MCU [1] seems pretty capable and certainly inline with what is being used in industry for suitable applications (it&#x27;s an Cortex-M4 64 MHz, 128 KB RAM, 512 KB flash, Bluetooth) but it doesn&#x27;t seem to have <i>hardware</i> support for any ML-specific stuff that I could see.<p>Oh, and there has been a keming accident on one of the images that is a bit unfortunate, the word &quot;MakeCode&quot; looks a great deal like &quot;MaleCode&quot; which is perhaps not optimal in their context [2].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nordicsemi.com&#x2F;Products&#x2F;Low-power-short-range-wireless&#x2F;nRF52833" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nordicsemi.com&#x2F;Products&#x2F;Low-power-short-range-wi...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tech.microbit.org&#x2F;docs&#x2F;latest-revision&#x2F;assets&#x2F;blog&#x2F;software-overview-v2.svg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tech.microbit.org&#x2F;docs&#x2F;latest-revision&#x2F;assets&#x2F;blog&#x2F;s...</a>

Espruino (a JS interpreter for MCUs) runs really nicely on this too now - you get wireless programming and debug, and a full Bluetooth LE stack (you can run Web Bluetooth <i>on</i> the device and use to control other consumer electronics).

I&#x27;m very excited to see nrf52833&#x27;s sweet new Bluetooth 5.2 capabilities made accessible to makers &amp; learners. Would that more devices of all manners try to offer this kind of up-to-date bluetooth support!<p>Also, always good having another capable &amp; affordable board show up on Zephyr IoT&#x27;s supported boards list. Should hopefully happen fast! <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.zephyrproject.org&#x2F;latest&#x2F;boards&#x2F;arm&#x2F;bbc_microbit&#x2F;doc&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.zephyrproject.org&#x2F;latest&#x2F;boards&#x2F;arm&#x2F;bbc_microbi...</a>

Really enjoyed playing with the original micro:bit. Nice to see they are iterating on it.

Great announcement. Also great that the LED array in version 1 was empirically a success.<p>As frequently as Raspberry Pi devices are mentioned in comparison, there also mbed-style [1] inexpensive boards which support the &quot;online compile and download to a virtual USB drive&quot; model, and offer free RTOS support. (Perhaps these too -- or variants -- could hit a sweet spot in educational contexts which Raspberry Pi could miss.)<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;os.mbed.com&#x2F;platforms&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;os.mbed.com&#x2F;platforms&#x2F;</a><p>Edit: micro:bit is included there as an mbed-compatible device: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;os.mbed.com&#x2F;platforms&#x2F;Microbit&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;os.mbed.com&#x2F;platforms&#x2F;Microbit&#x2F;</a> . So presumably one can also practice RTOS for IoT on a micro:bit .

Very nice. Does this mean that micropython will be able to do bluetooth now? The extra flash memory will be a boost for sensor-based datalogging, if only you could write to files in append mode. Is the updated micropython source tree for this available anywhere yet?

Very cool. Does it include battery charging&#x2F;management yet? That&#x27;s a complicated thing to make and it seems like a pretty important feature if you want to allow people to make cool battery powered devices.

I have made some projects with my daughter using the micro:bit with the Scratch programming interface.<p>We have also done a few projects using the Microsoft interface and the cutebot addition to have fun making a track following robot.<p>I could see voice control being a really cool feature for kids to have fun with.<p>I hope they offer some additional interfaces in Scratch to support some of these new features.<p>Does anyone have any idea when this new version will be for sale?

WiFI would have been awesome! I love the accessibility of this thing, and it’s a great place to get started for hardware enthusiasts since you can drag drop in the browser.<p>You could totally build a guitar tuner with the latest version

Use microbit fir my weather station but as said you need other parts. It is easier than pi&#x2F;arduino or the fpga I used as well. Not sure I will invest (my time) more though.

Isn&#x27;t this a competitor with the Raspberry PI - who had the same goals? And this was sponsored by the BBC (i.e. via licence payers money). And free devices given to children. Shoudln&#x27;t the BBC worked with the Raspberry PI foundation (charity) and given Raspberry Pis to children? Also the investment spent in making the PI not &#x27;overwhelming&#x27; - which my 9 year old says it isn&#x27;t (btw).

Cool, just yesterday my son tried a little bit of coding and was disappointed that the micro:bit had no speaker. So this upgrade is very welcome.

This is cool and all but let&#x27;s take a step back.. what can this thing do that much more powerful computers and smartphones can&#x27;t? If the answer is &quot;nothing&quot;, perhaps they are just producing unnecessary litter?