Windows earlier than 10
If you are running a Windows version earlier than 10, you must install a device driver (for the computer to recognize the serial interface of the micro:bit).
The serial supports serial communication between the BBC micro:bit and another computer. Basically, this allows you to send data from the micro:bit to your own computer. This is very useful for debugging purposes: you can add write line
statements in your code and see them display on your computer as the program executes.
The code below shows a simple script that sends a line when the BBC micro:bit starts and another line each time the button A
is pressed.
serial.writeLine("started...")
input.onButtonPressed(Button.A, () => {
serial.writeLine("A pressed")
})
Data is also automatically streamed to serial by the bar graph block and picked up by the editor. This data can be streamed to the cloud as well.
basic.forever(() => {
led.plotBarGraph(input.acceleration(Dimension.X), 0);
});
Unfortunately, using the serial library requires quite a bit of a setup.
Also, if you don’t see the serial port as one of your computer’s devices, you might need to update the firmware on the micro:bit. Find the device name for the attached serial port in the following instructions for your operating system.
Once both the driver and the terminal emulator are installed, plug in the micro:bit and wait until the device is fully setup. Then, open TeraTerm.
File
> New Connection
Ok
.Setup
> Serial Port
and set the baud rate to 115200
.You should be good. Feel free to hit Setup
> Save Setup
in the menus to erase the default configuration file with a new one so that you don’t have to type in the settings again.
Please note that Windows will assign you a different COM port if you plug in another micro:bit. If you’re juggling between micro:bits, you’ll have to change the COM port every time.
If you prefer another terminal emulator (such as PuTTY), here are some instructions.
screen
if it is not already installed.ls /dev/ttyACM*
./dev/ttyACM0
, type the command screen /dev/ttyACM0 115200
. If it was some other device node,
use that one in the command instead. Note: You may need root access to run screen
successfully. You can probably use the command sudo
like this: sudo screen /dev/ttyACM0 115200
.screen
, type Ctrl-A
Ctrl-D
.Alternative programs include minicom
and so on.
ls /dev/cu.*
will return to you a list of serial devices; one of them will look like /dev/cu.usbmodem1422
(the exact number depends on your computer)screen /dev/cu.usbmodem1422 115200
will open up the micro:bit’s serial output. To exit, hit Ctrl-A
Ctrl-D
.