Robots and Physical Computing

Code Bug has been around for a while, and it is incredibly cute, When it first came, it was a very interesting piece of kit - and it is still is and fun to play with. It spec means it is still a very useful piece of kit. 5x5 Red LED display 2 buttons 6 touch sensitive I/O pads (4 input/output, power and ground) Micro USB socket CR2032 battery holder Expansion port for I2C, SPI and UART Blockly-based online programming interface CodeBug emulator for checking code before downloading In 2020 Code Bug launched and successfully funded a Kickstarter campaign ( https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/codebug/codebug-connect-cute-colourful-and-programmable-iot-wearable ) for a new version the Code Bug - CodeBug Connect with a serious upgrade.(and the name Connect is highly appropriate with USB tethering and Wifi capability in this version. The technical specification (taken from their site https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/codebug/codebug-connect-cute-colourful-and-programmable-iot-wearable ...

I saw on Twitter that some people have got the GlowBugs, more commonly used the CodeBugs (http://www.codebug.org.uk/learn/activity/73/glowbugs/), to work with the Micro:bit. Here is my go at doing it. I just wanted to get one GlowBug to flash Red, Green and Blue and keep cycling around. The start point was to base it on the code from  http://microbit-micropython.readthedocs.io/en/latest/neopixel.html  for using Python with neopixels. The GlowBugs are essentially a single neopixel. So I connected the Data In to pin 0 and set the strip length to 1 (  np = neopixel.NeoPixel(pin0, 1)  ) and then set the colours by setting np[0] to the colour wanted (eg. Red   np[0] = (255, 0, 0) ). from microbit import * import neopixel # Setup the Neopixel strip on pin0 with a length of 1 pixel np = neopixel.NeoPixel(pin0, 1) while True:     np[0] = (255, 0, 0)     np.show()     sleep(1000)     np[0] = (0, 255, 0) ...

These little devices provide something different to a code. To see the coding interface go to  http://www.codebug.org.uk/  (or see figures 1 and 2) and click on create. Last two weeks Week 1  The code clubbers initially shared machines, playing with the CodeBug environment, practice downloading to the bug, writing a routine to scroll their short message. The challenge was then to develop a routine to have a smiley face and a grumpy face scroll across the screen. Week 2 All have access to the simulation and code generation on codebug.org.uk but this time they don’t have the CodeBug each, they have complete a challenge and run it on the simulation before get a CodeBug to try it. This week's challenge was to get the smiley and grumpy face from week 1 to be selected via the buttons (A and B) - so it involved a loop and conditional statements. Most of them picked it up very quickly. Two version were built - I reconstructed the ideas in f...

A simple transistor circuit is used here to get the CodeBug to control a small motor, turning it on or off. Drawn using Schemeit ( http://www.digikey.co.uk/schemeit/project/ )  The motor used here was a small cell-phone vibration motor, but it has been tried with other small motors. Using ‘leg 1’ to switch the motor on or off, +5v comes from the CodeBug PWR connector and GND come from the CodeBug. It can only drive the motor in one direction. In the code below Button A switches on the motor and Button B switches the motor off. 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.