BBC micro:bit finally distributed to school kids

After many months of waiting the BBC has finally started handing out its delayed micro:bit boards to schools and teachers. The micro:bit is a small microcontroller board intended to teach programming to 11-year old schoolkids. About one million of these boards will be given away for free. If all goes to plan, the board will also be available from retailers later on.

After many months of waiting the BBC has finally started handing out its delayed micro:bit boards to schools, teachers and children. The micro:bit is a small microcontroller board intended to teach programming to 11-year old schoolkids. About one million of these boards will be given away for free. If all goes to plan, the board will also be available from retailers later on.

The micro:bit board is based on a Nordic ARM Cortex-M0+ processor with Bluetooth capability. Besides this cool processor the board sports a 5x5 LED matrix with touch sensing capabilities, an accelerometer, a compass and two pushbuttons. An extension connector gives access to the I2C bus, the pushbuttons and several GPIO pins. Five extra large pads provide banana plug access to three I/O pins and power. Programming of the mbed-compatible board can be done in several programming languages, from Blockly to C++, all supported by a website.