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2019 - Term Two - Week Four - Micro:Bits

WORDS AND PHOTOS BY ARYA ELAMURUGAN

 

Hi, My name is Arya. It’s been 5 weeks for me here at stem club. I wanted to do some coding and science experiments.

 

We, a group of 5 children - Jai, Lenny, Reuben, Aria and me work with Hamish and made our own cubbie box in week-1, dismantled some electrical and electronic devices in week-2, scaled and made a solar system model in week-3 and learnt to code in week-4.

 

Hamish started the session with an interesting question, “How many computers are there in your home?".  Initially, we started writing down the count of laptops and computers we had at our home.  Later Hamish explained to us about various other computers we have at our home, like dishwasher, washing machine, mobiles, Television and many more. We re-counted the computers and wrote them down on the white board

 

We were presented with various computers and were told that we could program them. In this session, we programmed micro-bit.

 

Various small programmable Computers (microprocessor)                                   

 

Micro::bit

                       

 

Hamish handed each one of us a micro-bit, a USB cable, battery and a folder with some sample projects. We logged into the computer and hit microbit.org in the browser, where we programmed referring to the sample project. We all started with a code for a flashing-heart display in the micro-bit. We then downloaded the code to micro-bit, by connecting it to the computer with the USB cable. We could see the program running in micro-bit. Then we plugged in the battery to it to see if the program was still running.

 

I made a “Compass” and “Rolling-Dice”.  The rolling dice showed me different numbers every-time I shook the micro-bit. We all tried to bring in 6 on the dice.

                    

 

Me with micro-bit Compass                                     

 

Rolling-dice

 

Interested to see Jai’s name in the micro-bit?  I tried the same. It was fun trying it out.

                    

Jai                                                                  

 

 

Arya