The micro:bit Series - so far…
This series on the micro:bit was carved out of a long held desire to take a microcontroller platform, explore the MicroPython language then go where (mostly) no one else has ventured!
Several years back my wife generously gifted me a BBC micro:bit board for Christmas and this became the final motivation to get on with it.
While having some experience with Python I had never heard of MicroPython. It turns out that…
MicroPython is a lean and efficient implementation of the Python 3 programming language that includes a small subset of the Python standard library and is optimised to run on microcontrollers and in constrained environments.
In a nutshell, MicroPython has various flavours targeting specific microcontrollers and single-board computers (SBC) such as micro:bit, Pyboard, ESP8266, ESP32, Raspberry Pi Pico and so on. Each flavour has specifics to address the underlying hardware of the given platform.
While there are a limited number of excellent online references for most MicroPython variants there is just about nothing available for the micro:bit's MicroPython. The micro:bit libraries that allow access to the hardware on the board and microcontroller chip is well covered in the official documentation however there is nothing to be found on the 'pure' language.
My MicroPython for the micro:bit website is a reverse engineering of the micro:bit's version of MicroPython with the emphasis being on the language structure.
The micro:bit Series - Next…
With the MicroPython language for the micro:bit now explained there is one further task to be undertaken before moving onto the exciting stuff… connecting other gadgets to this venerable little board.
This small website explores the MicroPython tools (libraries) available that will necessarily be required to really discover what can be made "hang off" the micro:bit.