Micro:bit — BBC Gets A Million Kids Into Embedded Dev

July 7, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 149 Comments

In the Early 1980s, the BBC launched a project to teach computer literacy to a generation of British schoolchildren. This project resulted in the BBC Micro, a very capable home computer that showed a generation exactly what a computer could do. These children then went home, turned on their ZX Spectrums, and became a generation of software engineers. Still, the BBC Micro is remembered fondly.

The computer revolution is long over, but today we suffer a sea change of embedded processors and microcontrollers. With Arduinos and Raspberry Pis, the BBC has decided it’s time to put the power of an ARM microcontroller into the hands of a million 11- and 12-year olds. The result is the Micro:bit. It’s a small microcontroller board with an ARM processor, an IMU, buttons, Bluetooth and a 5×5 LED array – exactly what you need if you’re teaching a million kids how to blink an LED.

Although the BBC has finalized the design for the Micro:bit, there are no specs at all. However, a few educated guesses can be made. The USB controller is provided by Freescale, who also provide the digital compass and magnetometer. Programming is done through a web-based, Arduino-like IDE with what appears to be a decent Micro:bit specific library. The board is also mbed compatible. Bluetooth, and apparently the ARM Cortex M0 core, is provided by a Nordic nRF51822. There are only three alligator clip-compatible I/Os, and its doubtful any student will be building anything that would be too complex for an entry level ARM. It’s also 3V logic; finally, the tyranny of 5V has fallen.

The Micro:bit is best seen as a tool that enables the relatively recent addition of a computer science curriculum in UK schools. There is now a requirement for seven-year-olds to understand algorithms and create simple programs. Previously computer education in the UK has consisted of PowerPoint. Now, secondary school students will be learning Boolean logic.

While the Micro:bit is utterly useless as a tool for doing real work, education is not real work. For blinking a few LEDs, having a device react to movement, playing with Bluetooth, and other lesser evils of electronics, the Micro:bit is great. Not everyone will become the digital technologists this initiative is trying to create, but for those who have an inclination towards semicolons and electrons, this is a great introduction to technology.

50 Winners Using Microchip Parts

July 7, 2015 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

For the last few weeks we’ve been celebrating builds that use parts from our manufacturer sponsors of the 2015 Hackaday Prize. Today we are happy to announce 50 winners who used Microchip parts in their builds. Making the cut is one thing, but rising to the top is another. These builds show off some amazing work from those who entered them. In addition to the prizes which we’ll be sending out, we’d like these projects to receive the recognition they deserve. Please take the time to click through to the projects, explore what has been accomplished, and leave congratulations a comment on the project page.

Still Time to Win!

We’re far from the end of the line. We’ll be giving roughly $17,000 more in prizes before the entry round closes in the middle of August. Enter your build now for a chance in these weekly contests! This week we’re looking for things that move in our Wings, Wheels, and Propellers Contest.

One voter will win $1000 from the Hackaday Store this week as well! Anyone is welcome to vote in Astronaut or Not. Vote Now! The drawing is tomorrow afternoon.

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Upgrading An Old Lantern

July 7, 2015 by Will Sweatman 33 Comments

[Shockwaver] stumbled across some old kerosene lanterns, and decided he also stumbled across his next project. He decided to leave the kerosene out, and in its place used some RGB LEDs to bring the lanterns back to life. This is quite an upgrade. Considering the burning kerosene will only put out a few colors of light, the astute reader will have realized the RGB array has the ability put out over 16 million colors.

After some initial testing, he settled on a 24 LED circle array powered by an ATtiny85. The FastLED library helped him keep the code within the tight memory requirements. [Shockwaver] was not used to working with the such a small amount of memory, but after some fiddling he was able to make it work in the end, using 8,126 bytes.

The source can be found on his github page. Be sure to check out the video below to see the RGB lantern in action.

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Intense Brushless DC Stage Brings More E-Bike Power

July 7, 2015 by Nava Whiteford 17 Comments

[ZombieSS] wrote in to share the latest iteration of his new open hardware Brushless DC motor high power output stage posted on the Endless-sphere forums. The thread is a gold mine of useful information on designing, building and debugging high power electronics and the whole thing is worth reading. This includes the story of issues he faced with common mode noise picked up by the probe leads on his Rigol, which sidetracked the project for a while.

We’ve covered various ebike hacks before, but the guys at endless sphere appear to be developing a number of solid open hardware designs in this area. This includes the Lebowski controller which [ZombieSS] used in conjunction with his design.

He has installed the controller and output stage on his electric bike, and you can see one of the first test runs in the video below. We look forward to hearing more from the awesome hackers at Endless sphere!

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Collabatorium On Wednesday

July 7, 2015 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

Our next Collabatorium is just around the corner. On Wednesday we’ll open up the Hacker Channel for another action-packed discussion on what you’re building. Show your work, see what others are doing, ask for help, offer your skills, and more. It all begins at 19:00 CET (UTC+2).

All are welcome but you need to be added as a collaborator on the Hackaday Prize Hacker Channel. Go there now and click the “Request to join this project” link on the bottom of the left sidebar.

We had a blast last week with a huge mass of hackers hanging out in our virtual hackerspace. This week we’re changing up the time zones so that hackers in different parts of the world may take part. If you’re in Europe, this should be late enough that the work day done. Make sure to drop in and represent the hacker community in your part of the world. See you on Wednesday!

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

On-Demand Paper Clips

July 7, 2015 by Rich Bremer 19 Comments

3D Printers are great for printing out parts or items you need, but can they really help if you run out of paper clips? Yes, the all important and extremely overlooked bent metal fastener can put a serious damper on your day if not readily available. There is a solution to this problem, it’s called the Paper Clip Maximizer 1.0. The only consequence of using such a machine may be the destruction of mankind.

The machine takes a spool of wire and methodically bends it into a paper clip shape. Just like an extruder on a 3D Printer, there is a knurled drive wheel with a spring-loaded bearing pinching the wire. This drive wheel is powered by an RC servo that has been modified for continuous rotation. After the drive mechanism, the wire passes through a sturdy guide block. Upon exit, the wire finds the bending head, also powered by a servo. There is a bearing on the end of the bending head that is used to bend the wire around the guide block. After making several bends to form the paper clip, the bending head swings around to cut off the newly manufactured clip with an abrasive wheel. Unfortunately, this part of the process doesn’t work well. The cutoff wheel motor is powered directly by the Arduino that controls the entire machine, the power output of which is not enough to easily cut the wire. It can also leave a sharp burr on the cut wire which is not a great feature for paper clips to have. But we just see these as future fodder for hacking sessions!

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Hackaday Prize Entry: It’s Like Apple Pay, But For Receipts

July 6, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 18 Comments

There’s Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Wallet, and a host of other ways to pay for stuff with your phone. What about receipts, though? Do you really need to carry around little bits of paper to prove to incredulous friends you have, indeed, bought a donut? The proof is back home, in the file. Under D, for donut.

[Hisham] is working on a very interesting system for the Hackaday Prize. It’s effectively the the opposite side of every point of sale transaction that Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Wallet are working on. Instead of handling payment, [Hisham]’s Aelph handles receipts.

[Hisham]’s project is hardware, with a small device that plugs into a point of sale terminal. This device transmits a receipt to the Aleph app (or a third party app), and uploads a PDF copy of the receipt to a server. Other than a small hardware box, there’s no additional software required for a POS terminal. For retailers, it’s as easy as plugging in a box, and for consumers, it’s as easy as downloading an app.

The hardware was prototyped on a TI LaunchPad featuring a TIVA C microcontroller. This, along with the NFC eval kit give Aleph more than enough power to connect to a company LAN and spit out a few PDFs. You can check out one of [Hisham]’s demo videos below.

There are a lot of benefits to a electronic receipts; if you ever need a receipt, odds are you’ll scan it anyway – a dead tree receipt is just inefficient. There’s also some nasty chemicals in thermal receipt paper. You only need to Google ‘BPA receipt’ for that evidence. Either way, it’s a great idea, and we long for the day that our wallets aren’t stuffed to Costanzaesque proportions, and a time where we won’t need a scanner to complete an expense report.