[python-uk] BBC micro:bit hardware released under open license

[Carlos Pereira Atencio]

Hi Michael,

I  mean the tech-will-save-us layout, not the original one with the Atmel
chips, sorry for the confusion.

About the breakout board, there are a few companies doing interesting ones.
The now classic board from kitronik, the upcoming stuff from protopic, and
rkonlinestore has even made an Arduino shield adapter for the microbit.

But what I would love to see is something like this:
https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoProtoShield A breakout board that is
fully open (ideally in kicad as well, like the reference design has done),
so that anybody could use that as a base to make your own board.
I've had a couple of ideas I wanted to work on, but between having limited
free time and PCB design not being a strong skill of mine, I have been
putting if off. However if I was able to just download something like the
protoshield, a well designed base that is easy to modify, then that would
really save me a lot of time and work. From my point of view this type of
thing really enables newbies to get up and running quickly, removing some
of the initial barriers to have some cool PCB made for their projects.


Regards,
Carlos


On 19 October 2016 at 19:13, Michael <sparks.m at gmail.com> wrote:

> Carlos,
>
>
> Which original design do you mean? The actual board distributed to a
> million kids or the proto type microbit - proto:bit - that I did as the
> original work that enabled the partnership etc? (ie the stuff I talked
> about at Pycon UK last year - device, software stack, original DAL,
> website, original python/c++ compiler etc - ie that we used to run the
> schools trial with a 1000 devices across a dozen or so schools in the UK,
> and informed the original specs/reference docs)
>
> Regarding the former, I can't speak to that, but regarding the latter,
> I've had commitment from people to approve release of it, and so on and so
> forth, but it's now been over 12 months since I expected the go ahead for
> that. I still expect that to be released (and I know its in good hands),
> but I don't know when. (After all when you do work for an employer you
> don't own the code or rights to release... )
>
> It was always expected from all the partners (inc the BBC) that all
> contributions would be open source, so I'd hope/expect the same for the
> production hardware. (Though the reference implementation Nick's posted
> about here would be a much better starting point IMO, for someone looking
> to develop something new. )
>
> Regarding the python to c++ compiler part of it, that should be a bit moot
> by the time the proto:bit stack is released because I've been working
> (slowly) on a better one. (It allows you to compile python code for devices
> smaller than the ones Micropython will run on). (It's on pyxie -[a verbal
> play on pycc - pyc-c ] pypi/github/my website)
>
> I know that's a non-answer largely, at best slightly useful, but hopefully
> useful,
>
> Regarding a breakout board - proto pic have been tweeting about lots of
> interesting breakout boards they've been building recently..
>
> Regards,
>
>
> Michael.
>
>
> On 19 October 2016 at 16:34, Carlos Pereira Atencio <
> carlosperate at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> As far as I understood there was still talks with the BBC to release the
>> original design as well, is that still ongoing?
>>
>> Also, it would be quite awesome if there was also a OSH breakout board
>> for the edge connector, it could serve as a base for projects to interface
>> with microbit (like the Arduino shields, or raspberry pi hats). Who would
>> be the best person to ask about that, Jonny?
>>
>> On 19 October 2016 at 15:26, Nicholas H.Tollervey <ntoll at ntoll.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Here: http://tech.microbit.org/
>>>
>>> Please upvote this on HN:
>>>
>>> https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=12744016
>>>
>>> Yay... you can't imagine how happy I am this is all finally out there...
>>> everything is open and anyone can go make a micro:bit.
>>>
>>> N.
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>
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