Code micro:bit wirelessly with Android
Learning how to make your own stuff, even just learning how stuff works, is one of the most empowering skills you can gain. Over the years, we’ve shown you how to make all sorts of cool gadgets from drones to digital audio recorders, robots to tiny oscilloscopes – and all featuring small, low-cost microcontroller boards. Microcontrollers differ from your average PC microprocessor in that a microcontroller is a self-contained CPU chip with its own limited amount of RAM and storage, but also a number of input/output (I/O) ports. The RAM and storage are nowhere near enough to run Windows, but more than enough to run your own code to perform cool tasks such as interact with sensors and light up LEDs. Still, it can all seem pretty daunting the first time you play around with these things, but thanks to the excellent BBC micro:bit board, not only can you code it easily on your PC, you can code it via your Android phone or tablet via Bluetooth.
DESIGNED FOR (BIG) KIDS
The micro:bit board features 25 LEDs in a 5x5-grid, along with two momentary-on push-button switches. However, what’s really cool about this board is that it has built-in Bluetooth, plus an accelerometer sensor, very similar to the one in your Android phone. It connects to your PC via USB,
