Monday 28 March 2016

Playing with the micro:bit Emulator - Dancing bot

The micro:bit (https://www.microbit.co.uk/about) has been in the press quite a bit recently - rightly so. 

At the moment I have not got my hands on an actual one, though someone generously (more in later posts on that) will be lending me one to play with. Luckily you do not need the device to start playing; the code editor (https://www.microbit.co.uk/create-codehas an emulator built in, so you can start playing. This post reports on my first go.

So, I am starting with experimenting with the editor, using Microsoft's Block Editor - which is similar to Blockly and Scratch as an interface.





What I built is simple but that is fine - A dancing bot - 3x3 box for the body, with two legs. I wanted to play with getting some interaction that uses the buttons (A and B) and shaking. So the functions for the idea were:


  • Button A - make it bob up and down;
  • Button B - makes it move to the left and right;
  • Shaking it - makes it appear to jump and land (see below);
  • Button A+B together makes it do one of the moves of up, down, left and right.




The video below shows it action. 




The other nice thing is go convert to the Microsoft touch Developer version (see below) with a click.



I really enjoyed playing with this, the next stage to try it on physical micro:bit. 

I would be interested to hear from others about they have been doing with this (including just the emulator).


All opinions in this blog are the Author's and should not in any way be seen as reflecting the views of any organisation the Author has any association with.

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