What I learned by hosting a micro:bit meet-up

On Tuesday evening I booked a meeting room in the office and hosted a meet-up for some of our recent joiners. The evening was open to anyone (internally) who was interested in finding out about the BBC micro:bit, but specifically targeted at our community of recent hires. As this was the first time I’d hosted an event like this, I wanted to share my experiences. In short though, it definitely won’t be the last time we do this.

The BBC micro:bit

Whilst many of you will have heard of the Raspberry Pi and the Arduino, there will be few, particularly those outside the UK, who have heard of the BBC micro:bit, a new development board targetted at the next generation of creative thinkers.

In an effort to re-kindle the educational spirit behind the original BBC Micro from the early 1980s, the BBC teamed up with 29 industry partners to launch the BBC micro:bit. The device itself is tiny. It is over 18 times faster and 70 times smaller than it’s predecessor and includes an array of sensors (light, compass, accelerometer, buttons, temperature), a 5x5 array of LEDs, a Bluetooth radio, and a range of general purpose I/O pins.

The target market for this device is clear. Every year 7 (12 years old) student in the UK is being issued with one of these devices for free. Teachers are being provided with training material, tutorials that can be followed in class and a platform on which to share the resulting projects.

During the brief time that I have had to spend with the micro:bit, I have been amazed at some of the other things that have been done to make the micro:bit classroom friendly. I encourage you to explore for yourselves, but here are a few of my favourites;

• 5 programming languages from the Block Editor through to JavaScript, Python and C ensure that those of all levels can be creative from the start.
• Key I/O pins are exposed with pads large enough that crocodile clips (or even fingers) can be used to attach external accessories.
• No software installation required at all. The development environment is browser based (and yes, it works offline). You program the device by copying a file to a USB drive.
• Privacy is considered from the outset with no sign-up at all required for students. To share creations on the gallery, it is the teachers that register on the site.
• The gallery of projects encourages sharing of creative ideas and provides as inspiration for those just getting started.

If you are looking for more advanced micro controllers, there are plenty out there but I have yet to come across anything that comes close to the micro:bit in terms of accessibility at the entry level. And, for those who have long since graduated from Year 7, the devices are available for purchase from a number of approved retailers. I picked up mine from Pimoroni for £13.

The meet-up

With three micro:bits in my possession, I figured I’d ask and see if anyone else was interested in exploring the devices after work one evening. An experienced colleague got the ball rolling by saying he’d support me in hosting an event and pushed me to schedule a date. Our meet-up was arranged.

The level of interest surprised me. Despite it being the height of the summer holiday season, we had 7 people turn up and many more express an interest. What impressed me most though was the level of interest from those with no technical background. All who turned up had little to no coding or technical experience. This was an event driven purely by interest and a desire to learn.

• a desire to learn more about technology and the industry we work in
• a desire to keep ahead of younger relatives who are already involved
• a curiosity that arose after seeing my request for interest

I gave a quick background to the micro:bit, not much more than you have just read but probably more than was needed, and then we let people get stuck in. Some stayed to the end, others didn’t, but all bar one (more on that later) managed to get a little project running on the micro:bit with the device responding in some way to user input.

Ideas can be challenging

With all the sensors available on the micro:bit the creative possibilities are incredible. I hadn’t anticipated that coming up with ideas for starter projects would be challenging, but it was.

• No one wanted to copy someone else's idea or just do something simple
• Some wanted to follow a tutorial, others just wanted to explore
• Balancing the complexity of an idea with something that is accessible as a starter project requires a little experience

I was hesitant to suggest ideas as I really didn’t want to be prescriptive or risk influencing what people would come up with. But in this scenario, starting with the basics seemed to help build confidence. Displaying an image on screen, changing that image in response to user input was a quick way to get people seeing the micro:bit respond to code that they had written.

Note for next time: I noticed that people wanted to work individually rather than in groups. But it was only when people spoke to each other that ideas for projects started to form. Next time I might try spending 10 minutes as a group brainstorming a list of ideas before we start on coding. This would allow groups to form around popular ideas or individuals to pick up ideas and run with them without me worrying that I was being to prescriptive about what people should make.

Problems can always be broken down

Once we had ideas for people to work on, I noticed that a common challenge was breaking those ideas down into small steps. This challenges was universal with all of us struggling with it at some point. But it is this skill that is invaluable not just for developers and engineers, but for project managers and business analysts as well.

Take one of the challenges we faced: How do I make an image flash on screen a number of times?

When you discover there is no block like the one shown on the left (the image is a mock-up), the temptation is to stop and adapt your idea. In some cases the compromise is to go with a static image and abandon the notion of flashing. But challenging people to describe how they would flash an image yields thinking that is closer to the approach on the right which, in this case, is something that you can implement. Re-thinking concepts that we are familiar with, even something as basic as flashing an image, isn’t something that comes naturally to many. It’s like being asked to define a word you use regularly and finding yourself struggling to offer up a defintion. We’ve all been there.

In observing people go through this process of breaking down problems, I found it fascinating that people were starting to make connections between coding for the micro:bit and tasks they considered their day job. A business analyst responsible for mapping out a process is performing very similar tasks to a developer trying to piece together a program. The context may be different, but in both cases the goals are similar; to express a solution to a problem in a concise and logical way.

Note for next time: Challenging people to break down problems is one of the things I found myself doing frequently throughout the evening. In all cases, getting people describing the steps they would go through to solve a problem gave people the insight required to implement it. Given how crucial this skill is, it might be an idea at future events to get people to describe their proposed implementations verbally, either to the group or to each other, before then jumping in to implement them on the device.

Physical devices over simulators

Many of the languages for the micro:bit come with a simulator (Python and C being the exceptions). Whilst the simulator is fun and makes for a quick way to test ideas, the most satisfying moments were when people could see their creations running on the physical devices. There was joy, there were smiles. It was very much a moment of pride. It may seem obvious to anyone who has enjoyed that moment of delight the first time their code runs on a device, but simulators are no substitute for a physical device.

I’m pleased to say that by and large the experience of the simulator was good and that code that ran in the simulator also ran on devices. We did have one case where the compilation of code seemed to result in an empty project file. This was a shame as we were unable to get a fairly simple first project running on the device. What was more frustrating is that I wasn’t able to explain why things weren’t working.

Note for next time: The simplicity of the micro:bit is wonderful, but when things don’t go as expected it can be a little challenging to know where to turn. We had the added complexity of the fact that restrictions on corporate laptops prevent anyone from copying code to the micro:bit devices. This meant we resorted to emailing copies of compiled code for me to load onto the devices. Simplifying this process for next time would reduce the chance of things going wrong. Specifically:

• Encourage people to name their projects (the default names are repetitive).
• Get access to USB ports that are writeable if at all possible. If not, create a shared folder that people can use to simulate loading the code onto their devices.
• Encourage people to remove old files from the downloads folder to avoid confusion between project versions.
• Encourage people to switch between code view and block view to see a different take on the language used to describe their project.

Next-time

Initially I was worried that no one would turn up to the event. When people did turn up, I was worried they’d be bored and feel like they’d rather be elsewhere. I learned that these worries were unfounded.

The micro:bit isn’t just for children — we had great fun. And, whilst I love playing with the Raspberry Pi and the Arduino, I could never have hosted a room of non-techies with those platforms and had as much fun as we did with the micro:bit on Tuesday. I’d recommend this to anyone. If you have an interest, or even just a curiosity, open it up to others.

I’m personally delighted that we were asked to run the event again, both by attendees and those who were unable to make it. This is the best indication that the event was a success. The date is already in the diary and, now that the first one is out of the way, I’m looking forward to it.