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Squeak for BBC Micro bit?

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K K Subbu

Squeak for BBC Micro bit?

Hi,

Has anyone in this group tried out BBC's micro:bit board[1]? The board
was released around 2016 targeted at seventh graders - the same target
audience as the original Squeak and Etoys team.

[1] https://microbit.org/

What I like about the board is its out of the box readiness for
programming - It has two push buttons, 5x5 LED array, an accelerometer,
magnetometer and BT and USB chip on board and boots to a Micro Python
REPL shell. It powers up just from a pair of AAA batteries (included).
No need to muck around with toolchains. Just connect, power up and start
programming.

The board allows direct, live programming in the spirit of Morphic and
Logo turtle. I wonder if anyone has tried a squeeze a Squeak VM
(pipsqueak?) into this board? or tried to control the board from Squeak?

Regards .. Subbu

timrowledge

Re: Squeak for BBC Micro bit?

> On 2019-06-23, at 10:50 PM, K K Subbu <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Has anyone in this group tried out BBC's micro:bit board[1]? The board was released around 2016 targeted at seventh graders - the same target audience as the original Squeak and Etoys team.

The compute power is a bit... limited. It's not impossible one could make a Squeak that could fit, just a lot of work for not a great reward. *Driving* one from Squeak might be much more intersting; I nearly got the Raspberry Pi gang to pay to do the work to drive it from Scratch but.. Scratch 2 in Flash came along ruined a substantial fraction of the universe.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Do you like me for my brain or my baud?

K K Subbu

Re: Squeak for BBC Micro bit?

On 24/06/19 10:15 PM, tim Rowledge wrote:

>> On 2019-06-23, at 10:50 PM, K K Subbu<[hidden email]>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Has anyone in this group tried out BBC's micro:bit board[1]? The
>> board was released around 2016 targeted at seventh graders - the
>> same target audience as the original Squeak and Etoys team.
> The compute power is a bit... limited. It's not impossible one could
> make a Squeak that could fit, just a lot of work for not a great
> reward.*Driving* one from Squeak might be much more intersting; I
> nearly got the Raspberry Pi gang to pay to do the work to drive it
> from Scratch but.. Scratch 2 in Flash came along ruined a substantial
> fraction of the universe.

The board may be small for modern Squeak, but it already runs
MicroPython interpreter. It sits between Arduino and Raspberry Pi and
would make a good target for a scaled down Etoys or NetMorph.

No doubt that it is a low floor, low ceiling board but combined with
some simple hardware like Move Mini Buggy [1], it could reify a turtle
and communicate with a parent Squeak over BT for larger work.

[1] https://www.kitronik.co.uk/blog/drawing-move-mini-buggy/

Regards .. Subbu

Yoshiki Ohshima-3

Re: Squeak for BBC Micro bit?

It also runs MicroBlocks:

http://microblocks.fun/

done by none other than John Maloney. It runs a small VM on MicroBit that allows hot code editing when tethered and then can run standalone.

On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 10:33 AM K K Subbu <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 24/06/19 10:15 PM, tim Rowledge wrote:
>> On 2019-06-23, at 10:50 PM, K K Subbu<[hidden email]>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Has anyone in this group tried out BBC's micro:bit board[1]? The
>> board was released around 2016 targeted at seventh graders - the
>> same target audience as the original Squeak and Etoys team.
> The compute power is a bit... limited. It's not impossible one could
> make a Squeak that could fit, just a lot of work for not a great
> reward.*Driving* one from Squeak might be much more intersting; I
> nearly got the Raspberry Pi gang to pay to do the work to drive it
> from Scratch but.. Scratch 2 in Flash came along ruined a substantial
> fraction of the universe.

The board may be small for modern Squeak, but it already runs
MicroPython interpreter. It sits between Arduino and Raspberry Pi and
would make a good target for a scaled down Etoys or NetMorph.

No doubt that it is a low floor, low ceiling board but combined with
some simple hardware like Move Mini Buggy [1], it could reify a turtle
and communicate with a parent Squeak over BT for larger work.

[1] https://www.kitronik.co.uk/blog/drawing-move-mini-buggy/

Regards .. Subbu

-- Yoshiki