I'm a teacher and just discovered the micro:bit as a tangible (as opposed to screen-only) way to keep my students excited about coding. My 4th graders do well with the visual programming blocks of code.org, so I'm trying to stay within Microsoft's MakeCode GUI constraints (without requiring the kids to get into the text-based programming of each LED in the code). Example of GUI for coding the LED array.
What I'd like to do is create a larger display of the 5x5 grid using LEDs, perhaps a 15 inch x 15 inch "light box" that I could place one LED in each 3x3 inch cube. This would be our "showcase" box where the students could plug in their micro:bit and display their code to the class, or a student could create a welcome message to be placed in the classroom window, etc.
I've seen projects that light a LED strip with the micro:bit, but it's unclear to me whether each LED is individually addressable, and if so, if they could be addressed using the GUI (like it was mapped from the onboard LED's programming) or if it needs to be written out one by one the code.
Feasible? Or could another board be used with the MakeCode source to power this project so the students could simply copy their MakeCode source to another device and run it?
This is the Arduino forum, not the microbit forum, so members here probably won't be familiar with the hardware and software you describe.
If all the pins that drive the 5x5 matrix were accessible on the edge connector, we could have advised on the design of an external circuit to drive larger LEDs. Unfortunately only some of those pins are accessible. The matrix, it seems, is driven by 13 pins, and half of them are accessible on the edge connector.
Potentially useful are the SPI and I2C pins on the connector. These could be used to control an led driver chip for your larger display. But this would require changes to the libraries/functions that control the on-board matrix, and its unlikely anyone on this board would have the necessary knowledge to do that. If you can find advice on that from elsewhere, maybe this forum can help with the hardware side.
Thank you much, PaulRB, for your thorough response. I thought microbit was Arduino, but I see now it's not an official Arduino board or variant. I will keep looking in regards to the possibility connecting a LED driver chip.
So forgive me if this is a ridiculous question - is there an Arduino setup with an LED matrix that can be easily programmed through a GUI? Everything I've seen for this age level is proprietary and not extensible, like the LED matrix on the Sphero Bolt. I'm looking for a way for the kids to be able to show off their code with a larger LED board, but without having to get into text-based programming. As I'm delving into this more (this is my first foray into the world of Arduino), I'm seeing programs (IDE's?) the kids use like MakeCode, Code.org, and Scratch are pretty much their own ecosystems and do not interface with Arduino.
I have heard of attempts to give Arduino a GUI coding interface. But judging by the requests for help with them we occasionally see on this forum, I wouldn't touch them with the proverbial 10ft barge-pole. Arduino coding is text based, C++ with a bunch of standard libraries layered on top.
I've seen screenshots of some of those attempts and it looks pretty much like the written code. Thank you for your quick and frank feedback - I'm just scratching the surface of Arduino and don't know what's out there and generally possible, so what I have in mind is clearly not out there yet, at least at a more basic programming level without going proprietary. Back to the drawing board!
What I'd like to do is create a larger display of the 5x5 grid using LEDs, perhaps a 15 inch x 15 inch "light box" that I could place one LED in each 3x3 inch cube. This would be our "showcase" box where the students could plug in their micro:bit and display their code to the class, or a student could create a welcome message to be placed in the classroom window, etc.
That's a really neat idea.
Aren't there already several Micro:bit "simulators" that could throw up student programs on a big screen?
