microbit_iot

A simple light sensing application with micro:bit radio and serial.

Tested on a MAC, using Python 2.7.11 and serial version 3.2.1.

The description of this application is in my blog article Micro:bit and the Internet of Things.

For this application, we need two micro:bits and a laptop. Our application has three parts:

• Sensing: One micro:bit will act as the sensing device, and will send its light measurements to a second micro:bit using its radio.
• Communications gateway: The second micro:bit is the gateway and sends what it receives to the laptop over the serial.
• Analytics and visualization: To show the incoming measurements the laptop runs a visualization scripts.

Making it work

Prerequisite: Python installed.

1. Install microbit-LightSensorSender.hex into the sensing micro:bit.
2. Install microbit-LightSensorReceiver.hex into the gateway micro:bit.
3. Make sure you leave the gateway micro:bit connected to your laptop (you would have needed to connect them to download the code into micro:bits).
4. Download serialPlot.py and run. If the gateway micro:bit is not connected via serial, this script will give an error. Otherwise, it brings up a dynamic graph.
5. Turn on the sensing micro:bit if you have not, and experiment with the set-up under different lighting conditions.

An example of how things should look like is here: Youtube video