Getting kids interested in programming is all the rage right now, and the UK is certainly taking pole position with its BBC micro:bit, just recently distributed to every seventh-grader in the land. Germany, proud of its education system and technological prowess, is caught playing catch-up. Until now.
The Calliope Mini (translated here) is essentially a micro:bit clone, but one that has learned from the experience of its spiritual forefather — the connection points are spread around the outside of the board where the crocodile clips won’t accidentally touch each other.
Not content to simply copy, the Calliope also adds additional functionality. A microphone and speaker are integrated onboard, as is a Grove-style I2C connector. They’ve even added a TI DRV8837 H-bridge motor driver, so students could make a rolling robot straight out of the box.
Open Source
But the real secret ingredient here is piggy-backing on the existing BBC micro:bit codebase and infrastructure. Freed from having to re-develop all of the essentials, the Calliope team should be able to work on coding and examples for their shiny new hardware. That’s the great thing about open-source software.
We’re left wondering if the micro:bit platform will become as important as the Arduino has. If Calliope gets adopted wide-scale in Germany, that would be a harbinger. Having two countries’ kids all familiar with the same platform will certainly give it a boost.
… But not Open Hardware
[Edit: Stop the presses! Just hours after running this story, the micro:bit foundation was announced and an open hardware reference design was published. Talk about coincidences!]
But why aren’t the designs for either the micro:bit or the Calliope open-sourced? There’s not enough going on that it would take an average hacker more than an afternoon to reverse engineer either of the boards, so there’s little to gain by not opening up to the community. And many of the people contributing software would also like to contribute hardware hacks to the device’s ecosystem.
If these platforms are going to become important to future generations of hacker kids, isn’t it also important to teach them a little engineering along the way? Shouldn’t that be part of the educational package? And if getting the boards cloned and produced cheaper is the “cost”, isn’t that a win for kids who want a second micro:bit but don’t have money burning a hole in their pocket?
Hackaday kudos (and a writeup) to the first open reversing. And if you’re using the micro:bit, or its software ecosystem, here’s your call to let us know in the comments.
Thanks [Felix] for the tip!
Sad to see that the hardware design is not free. I live in Germany and it sure would be great to give this thing to kids in school. But we put so much tax money in such projects, yet they are not forced to open up anything. There should be more rigorous open access / libre software / open hardware laws for state funded projects.
CodeBug is open sourced and has wider spaced connectors. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/922345933/codebug http://www.codebug.org.uk. It was the inspiration for Micro:bit. Shame they didn’t acknowledge it or share their schematic.
Well you can’t get more ‘Arduino like’ than that???
Flog the idea and software from an open source project and then build closed source hardware and never acknowledge the hard work of the original project – Yep that’s ‘Arduino’ in a nut shell.
Microbit is ARM based and CodeBug is based on a Microchip PIC18F processor, so the tool chain is different. I think BBC Microbit was announced before CodeBug, see https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=105921
The CodeBug is what the Microbit was originally going to be. The guys originally working on it left to make CodeBug because Microsoft and friends opted to completely redesign it. If you remember there were significant delays in deployment.
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/bbc-microbit-inside-story
Scroll down to “Reviving the BBC Micro”
For all unable to decipher the german language: The project is to be open. Here is the translation of the last paragraph on http://calliope.cc/mission:
All materials, (hardware, software and accompanying documentation[?]) will be submitted under the OER-fiendly cc-by-sa licence
Alle Materialien (Hardware, Software und begleitende Materialien) werden unter der OER-freundlichen cc-by-sa Lizenz veröffentlicht.
OER: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_educational_resources
Hey, Leo here (I coordinate the firmware development for Calliope). The hardware is going to be open sourced. The hardware is still in the works as is the firmware adaption. So don’t judge too early please.
Um.. Is that a wearable 6 pointed star from Germany…..?
:sigh:
Surely when you set the headline you weren’t thinking of any particular german known to react to things on youtube?
Your comment is evil… Yet I laughed so hard because of it.
what’s evil about pointing out a bit of PR fail on calliope’s part? hell, germany seems to consider it important not to offend anyone, so this isn’t even holding them up to a standard they likely to disagree with.
Notice that they never take a picture of it point up. You could always look at it in a positive way. They are handing out cool devices that do look like a Star of David to all their students.
They run out of 5 pointed ones from the DDR. 4 pointed ones could be construed as crosses, so also could not be used. Decisions, decisions.
seven or nine?
That will be Seven OF Nine …YOU’ll be assimlated, moron. I never read so many Idotic comments about a technical matter.
Seven of nine!
it must be a sherriff’s badge ;)
Demo code makes a scrolling sentence on the leds… He brew. I wonder what means.
He means that Germain like beer ;-)
Oh my gosh!
https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2014-04/enhanced/webdr06/22/10/enhanced-buzz-26781-1398177437-5.jpg
> Um.. Is that a wearable 6 pointed star from Germany…..?
…just an oversimplification of a snowflake…
:-Þ
If we get political, we’d have to comment every triangle in Germany too… please let’s not start this and just let’s have fun with chips and friends…
Ok?
If we get boring we’ll bring you in right away
Lo fl
As far as the gossip goes, BBC plans to open the hardware specs since the beginning — it’s just a huge corporation and it takes a lot of time to get it through all the approvals. There has been several unofficial promised dates already, and they all whooshed by. Hopefully they will get their act together soon.
And here we go, released! http://tech.microbit.org/
That was quick! I guess they just needed an external nudge ;-)
By the way, Japan has their own Chibi:bit too! https://yseosoft.wordpress.com/2016/08/13/chibibit_firstimpression/
“Ze britishers, zey are unbeatable!”
“Ze entire resources of Germany are at your command, vat do you need?”
“Give me a squadron of bit micros!”
Riffing off the apocryphal quote ascribed to Galland, when he was asked by Goering what was needed to stop losing or start winning, “Give me a squadron of spitfires!” … but I forgot…
https://youtu.be/yfl6Lu3xQW0
It seems it doesn’t have the edge connector.
But there is a double row of 100mil spaced holes. Same number of pins as a raspberry pi version 1.
And the 5 holes over this are probably SWD interface for programming/debugging.
The website says on their “Mission” page that the hardware will be cc-by-sa.
That’s fantastic, and I missed it. Can’t wait!
I’ll have to give it a writeup/update when they do go open.
Stop the presses! Micro:bit just went “foundation” and there’s a reference design in GitHub. Story coming out later today.
Hackaday demands, micro:bit responds! (Just kidding. Looks like the most ridiculous coincidence.)
I found this git:
https://github.com/calliope-mini
a) Cool!
b) No hardware?
I can imagine the PCB purchase order, color: any color but yellow!
So JST connectors are named Grove-Style now?
JST PH Series, 2.0mm pitch anyway.
https://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/9030/what-type-of-connector-does-the-grove-system-use
Not your ‘standard’ 0.1″ pitch JST
I for one welcome our new Grove Overlords. :-) It’s a marketing tie in, I’m happy that Hackaday gets the click through to pay for this site.
I’d rather give every child a Wemos D1 mini and an oled shield for free. They’re dirt cheap, have WiFi, and you can use nearly every programming language you want.
If you’re lazy, you can even use ready made images (like ESPEasy), to do cool things without writing a single line of code.
Oh, and BTW: Wemos released all of their schematics (although not the CAD data).
https://github.com/nodemcu/nodemcu-devkit-v1.0
;-)
More expensive and no shields.
Thinking about the same. There is already plenty of cheap boards from china.
That’s valid, but not without tradeoffs.
BLE (micro:bit) vs WiFi (ESP8266): battery life, tether to phone vs laptop, range/hackability of networking
ARM (m) vs Xtensa (E): standard vs specialty, availability of documentation and ecosystem — you really can’t oversell the importance of the mbed platform for folks writing software for the micro:bit on a development level.
LEDs and buttons and etc built in (m) vs Extensible (E). This could be fixed with an ESP8266 daughterboard or two.
But yeah. I think you can make a compelling case for both. That would have been a cool alternate universe where the BBC/education folks working on the software supported the ESP8266 for the platform. My guess is that Nordic’s pockets are significantly deeper than Espressif’s, and they’re fronting the chips.
The trigger points were “startup company” and “public funding” – that is why they did not use the micro:bit.
On the other hand there are new features that come handy like integrated loudspeaker, motor driver and Grove connector. (WiFi would be a bad choice.)
I do not know if the micro:bit’s connectors are really too close together for young kids but once you are reshaping the board one connector at each corner seems a good idea. If the result is a star shape – so be it.
To me the Calliope looks not as bad as it could have been. I am a bit proud of my government…
Probably an Italian version won’t come, we have already Arduino as school provider. The sponsor is Telecom Italia.
Anyway these small boards in school do wonders. Making lessons on classrooms, the kids labeled as bad guys suddenly become the most interested, some girls show off some impressive knowledge of software programming and when the ring bells they keep asking wht else can be done.
I gave an “Arduino Starter Kit”,
(a couple of Arduino clones and a bunch of sensor boards found on Amazon along with a getting started with Arduino book) to my godson last year. His older sister is now more interested in it…
It does lose that edge-connector aspect though, although I doubt there are any compatible slots.
The speaker is a good idea, as that will interest students who are more musical.
If the micro:bit is not yet open-source, how did they get the firmware for the bootloader? Is there an alternative out there (given that it’s essentially just mbed)?
Little to gain from open Source? Thats a bit rich. As an educational establishment openness and collaboration should be front and centre. Otherwise, why are they doing it? Are they just using Education money to ramp up?
I’m not sure I understand what these things are meant to acomplish or how. Is it all about coding? If so then why would they want to code for this, a device with a little LED matrix, 3 buttons (one is probably just reset) and a piezo speaker. They could just write code for the computer itself which they are coding on and have access to a lot more hardware. Or is the idea that they will use those big edge connectors and actually get some hardware to hook up. Are they going to build robots? In that case I think they should have at least a couple of h-bridges built in and they should hand out a bunch of hardware along with the badges. Otherwise, the kids who are going to bother to actually get something to hook up are going to be the same ones who would have just bought an ‘duino anyway and the rest of the kids probably aren’t going to do much with it.
Or is the idea that kids would want to program if only they had something to code on? Are there that many kids in the industrialized world with no computer or tablet or cellphone. In that case I guess they could code on the computers at school, the advantage of the badge being that at least they would be able to take it home running their code. Are there really that many out there with no home computer though? Even a cheap Android tablet can run Aide allowing a child (or adult) to write full-fledged Android apps. There are also Python, BASIC and other interpreters which would run on a tablet or phone.
It seems far fetched to me that there are many kids left in the world in places where their governments can afford to buy them badges like this yet they don’t just already have access to plenty of kit that they can code on.
“Are there really that many out there with no home computer though?”
I think they’re starting to die off, many people can’t be bothered any more when they’ve got a capable phone and/or tablet.
However, the low end tablet thing is a bit of a minefield, there may be “a” cheap tablet that can do x, but you’re relying on the non tech savvy to make good choices. Some and this also goes for some higher priced brand names, are kind of hostile to many or large apps being installed. They do this by only giving you a couple of hundred MB on the system partition, and ballsing up how the rest of the onboard flash is handled, sometimes making it the only “SD Card” the apps can be moved to. Sometimes making it extra, but being super super picky about which if any SD cards they will work with. Anyhoo, even when you can move stuff to SD, by the time you’ve got half a dozen popular things on there like google maps, youtube, netflix, and moved them all to SD, they’ve still probably left a 50MB footprint, and your tiny system partition is swallowed up real quick… and the people who would have to deal with this are the ones who have a tablet because they thought windows was too complicated…
Of course you are right; whenever you see the word “improving technology education” or “helping the children in poor countries”: run! The people who come up with these things do it because they reinvent the things they would have liked when they were kids themselves, obviously, but rather than embracing their own childishness (which is nothing wrong, especially for an engineer) they feel a need to somehow label it “charity” or “helping the children”, because that’s the way to attain the crown of holiness and ascend to the realm of untouchable Good Person.
Then when public schools or some government board gets word of this sort of thing they see it as a nice opportunity to throw money at something tangible to show that they are really trying hard to improve education, without having to actually improve it of course.
What they accomplish is to make all those “kids” they are “helping” hate programming by instilling them with the feeling that it is something obscure, obsolete and ultimately useless.
Try getting the 50 year old ex-engineer teacher learn modern Android app development though. Not going to happen, but he’ll feel right at home with some weird device that reminds him of his high school days when he connected some transistors to the printer port on his Commodore PET and made it write out his phone number on a 7 segment display one digit at a time.
Or the 50 year at the BBC who greenlit this thing.
It is opensource now:
http://tech.microbit.org/
This is not the only German reaction. There are also:
http://www.bob3.org/
https://www.tindie.com/products/FabLab/octopus-the-iot-badge/
There are more expensive then the microbit/codebug/Calliope but they also targeting the STEM subjects (in german: MINT Fächer) in German schools.
Oh, and i missed to mention the http://bayduino.com/ .
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ybf0q5ljodjyvml/MicrobitV06.pdf?dl=0
There is a Crowdfunder for getting one on Startnext right now
http://startnext.com/calliope
The original micro:bit, in terms of schematic is Open Hardware: the pcb awaits some form of approval for release
https://github.com/bbcmicrobit/hardware
I now try and translate german and find the schematics for the Calliope
https://makecode.com/ shows the process of further work in the applications that drive micro controller’s.
– “Javascript” with blocks
Python is also present, however, the support of “Bluetooth” is confined to propriety radio for the nRF51 platforms as there is not enough ram/rom on the nRF51 platform to support full blown BLE.
I have not been able to find the Open Hardware schematics for the Calliopo (micro:bit schematics, as already posted, https://github.com/bbcmicrobit/hardware)
Here is the documentation, including Eagle files of the board: https://calliope-mini.github.io/
It’s in German, but I am sure you will find your way around. You can select revision 0.3 (2016) and the current revision 1.0.
I may need to play with the theme, it’s not really good on mobile.
Leo.
Thanks Matthias :)
We are some people that would like to make a board for both the micro:bit and calliope so kids can explore ttn and iot.
We felt that it would be good to support both so kids of all countries can play and learn.
We are still in startup, but will try our best to figure out how to calliope this thing (I still need to get a Calliope to ensure hands on with the hardware)
https://github.com/lrnzzz/ttn-iot-explorer-board and there is also a hackaday just for completeness.
We have used the Calliope Mini with a LoRa connection in hackathons in Berlin and Cologne. One was checking the functionality of elevators and the other one was to check bridge vibration.
You should not need to use the 26 pinout. A better idea I think might be either the i2c or uart groves. If you have questions, feel free to contact me (@thinkberg on twitter or via github)
will do
https://github.com/lrnzzz/ttn-iot-explorer-board/issues/4 :)
Matthias,
Matthias Koch had adapted his Mecrisp Forth for the micro:bit.
See https://wiki.forth-ev.de/doku.php/en:projects:microbit:start .
How difficult will it be to run this Forth on the Calliope? Might be a non-problem as both are mbed. As I initiated the port at the time and some documentation is included in
A Start With Forth https://www.amazon.co.uk/Start-Forth-2017-Bits-Bites-ebook/dp/B073NMX1XP/ref=sr_1_13?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1499278235&sr=1-13
and most of the chapters are are available for free at https://wiki.forth-ev.de/doku.php/en:projects:a-start-with-forth:start0
or as non-Forth: How much of Burkhard’s book about the microbit could be used with calliope? https://www.amazon.co.uk/BBC-Micro-Tests-Tricks-Secrets/dp/1541200721/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
I will take a look. A friend of mine has implemented Tali-Forth and might be interested ;-)
Danke, Matthias, waere schoen.. Really looking forward to your findings as I would like to see it combined – a German microbit and a German Forth.. Matthias’s Forth is excellent as you can hear elsewhere. I can say this as I see it only from the outside ( and can only look up at the details ) and have seen the amount of work and files he has put into it and generated.
Tali Forth seems only to be available for 6502? Correct?
Yes, more of a pet project :-)
I Like the play on Worde a PET …
If embed is the connection, then the existing Forth for microbit shoud be very similar to what Calliope needs. Looking forward to any feedback to find a solution for all of the Calliope users as well.
Well, I can answer my own question now: Contacted Calliope, Contacted Matthias who ported his Mecrisp to microbit at the time: The Mecrisp binary for microbit can be used for Calliope as well , no change needed – and probably the Japanese version. See the update and there are a first few examples to address the differences – more to come
https://www.forth-ev.de/
https://wiki.forth-ev.de/doku.php/en:projects:microbit:start