A LED light, a microphone, buttons… On the rough red board of the Edu:Bit is gathered all that could be used in the work with a microcontroller. The board for the BBC Micro:Bit is the latest development of the Malaysian company Cytron Technologies, which has already produced useful plug-on boards or its own further developments for other electronic platforms.
The Edu:Bit measures 157.50 mm × 124.50 mm and is therefore much coarser than the Micro:Bit, which is simply plugged in. It is also equipped with a piezo buzzer, a potentiometer, an infrared sensor and four RGB LEDs. Thanks to the additional power supply and the three connectors for servos as well as two ports for DC motors, you can also tackle coarser projects right away. By default, the connectors and components are integrated on the board, but can also be broken off and reconnected via Grove cables.
The kit is available in Cytron’s store with and without extra Micro:Bit, for 49.75 and. 34,75 US-Dollar (the latter are currently sold out). The kits contain further parts, like an instruction book, a servo and a motor, Grove cables and cards for a game. The manual contains ten lessons to learn and program the components of the kit.
More connectors, more integrated components
Improvements like status LEDs on the pins to track down connection problems faster have already been used by Cytron in its previous projects. Surveys among teachers have shown that troubleshooting takes up too much time of the school lessons. In addition to the Maker Uno boards, further developments of the Italian Arduino Uno, there is also a Raspberry Pi plug-in board from Cytron, the Maker pHAT.