“I pre-ordered this kit for my niece. She missed out on the schools' issue, as she is a year too young. Not wanting her to miss out, as she'd had a chance to play with a pre-production model courtesy of the BBC, I thought I would go with the battery pack in addition to enable her to run her programs with the Micro:bit detached from the laptop.
The Pi Hut had indicated that the kit would be available in mid-July and the package duly arrived when promised, so a point in favour there. The package was securely packed, protecting the components.
All was in order and functioning and it didn't take my niece too long before she had it up and running programs. She has already been playing with it on several occasions and she likes both that she can use it with her laptop and her tablet. She likes the flexibility to choose where she sits to work and doesn't need to inconvenience her brother and sister.
The local incubator lab is planning to host a Micro:bit "Jam" and she's interested in going along to take part.
The bottom line: A good choice of product (the kit) and well handled by The Pi Hut, who delivered when they said they would. Already of utility to my niece, I would be stopping at The Pi Hut, as first choice if I need to buy another one.”
“The associated website and tools are littered with errors, poor programming examples and a simulator that doesn't truly reflect what the code will do ... Unless these things improve significantly I suspect we will not be doing the kids any favours.”
“The BBC dis it agian, after the BBC Micro got so many kids enthousiastic, again a small computer will make young (and old kids kike me!) enjoy physical computing, on the thin line between hardware and software. There is so much quality support available for this device, from very simple to sophisticated! And no intimate knowledge of Linux required!”
“I was one of the first to get a BBC Model B. I remember waiting for it as the delivery date slipped further into the future. The Micro:Bit has followed the same trajectory. I have now three years to get to grips with it before my grandson starts telling me what a network is.”
“Its a cross between an ARDUINO and Raspberry PI. You have access to hi level languages such as Python but you need a PC or smart phone to program it. Although not all smart phones work with it. The programming works from your web browser and does not require any software to be installed on your PC. The down side is that there does not appear to be any way of sending information from the micro:bit to your PC, all error messages are displayed on the microbits scrolling led display. The Python TIME function is very inaccurate at small values.”
