Microbit
Advanced
60 mins
Teacher/Student led
245 points
What you need:
Chromebook/Laptop/PC
Microbit

Microbit Finder

In this step-by-step lesson, you'll learn to create a Microbit Finder using two Microbits. You'll set up a new project, create variables, set the radio group and mode, and program the Microbits to send and receive messages. You'll also learn to display signal strength, indicating how close the Microbits are to each other. Finally, you'll download the code onto both Microbits and test your project.
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    1 - Introduction

    For this project you will need 2 Microbits. Both of them will need to be powered on and one of the power sources will need to let you walk around with the Microbit, so either a Microbit battery pack or a USB power bank.

    The code that we create will be downloaded onto both Microbits and we will use the A and B buttons to set which Microbit is "lost" and which one is the "finder".


    2 - Create a new Microbit project

    Go to the https://makecode.microbit.org website and create a new project.

    3 - Create 2 variables

    For this project we will need to create the following 2 variables:

    1. mode - this will store if the Microbit is acting as the "lost" Microbit or the "finder" Microbit.
    2. signal - this will store the signal strength that we will use to determine how close the Microbits are to each other.

    Create a variable called mode and a variable called signal and then add the following code to setup the 'mode' variable to a blank string "".

    let mode = ""

    4 - Set the radio group

    We need to set the radio group that our Micorbits will be broadcasting on so that they can communicate with each other. A radio group is the channel that the Microbit both sends it's messages and listens for other messages. A Microbit can only send or receive in one group at a time.

    Add the following code to set the radio group to 1.

    let mode = ""
    mode = ""
    radio.setGroup(1)

    5 - Set the mode

    Next we are going to program the A and the B buttons to set the mode of each Microbit.

    If you press the button A then you will set that Microbit to be the finder Microbit.

    If you press the button B then you will set that Microbit to be the lost Microbit.

    Add the following code:

    input.onButtonPressed(Button.A, function () {
        mode = "finder"
    })
    
    input.onButtonPressed(Button.B, function () {
        mode = "lost"
        basic.showIcon(IconNames.Skull)
    })
    
    We set an icon to show for the lost Microbit so we can tell them apart. You can choose any icon to display.

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