The BBC reveals the final design of its Micro Bit computer

[HEXUS]

About a million UK school children will get this computer for free in October.

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[azrael-]

Well, it isn't the BBC Micro...

[sykobee]

It's cute, looks like a face with its two buttons and array of pin holes.

I believe it is using https://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Products/Bluetooth-Smart-Bluetooth-low-energy/nRF51822 as the SoC - they both use 1822 in the name anyway.

[McEwin]

"This is a simple spirit level program that displays a tick when"... the device is being turned over and definitely isn't flat.

[DanceswithUnix]

Start of next term I will have a child in year 6 and one in year 8. So close, but if I want to play with one I guess I will have to buy one

[ET3D]

It's not "Cortex M-O", it's "Cortex M0".

This confirms the CPU is the nRF51822.

[yeeeeman]

They should've used this tiny little ucontroller, which is 2 x 1.61 x 0.56 Pitch 0.4 mm. 2 freaking mm, this is the size of the microbit's accelerometer. Still, it's a good idea, this project.

[MrDLips]

I remember I posted last night about this and it was a decent post, but a mod has deleted it fearing I am spamlord.

THIS WILL NOT WORK.

The BBC Micro failed to get students into computers in my generation because despite their ubiquity, few teachers knew how to work them. I got taught word processing ad inifitum til I left school, and I went to a school that was high in the national charts.

This is just a PCB with ports which is arguably worse. Granted, web delivery platforms to teach the teachers may unburden teachers of the mystery of what to do with it and how to educate, but they then still have to know more about it than the kids and convey some enthusiasm about the tech.

I love technology, but this (the concept and the device) baffles me.

[Toadem]

So Microborg and the beeb have decided to put the Raspberry Pi out of business, hmmm, why is it Microsoft suddenly decided they want to get involved in giving all this stuff away for free - are they no longer a business? or did I miss something.

[b0redom]

What MrDLips said. Why are they providing these things for free? If the idea is to get kids more involved in IT, surely providing Raspberry Pis and a curriculum to go with them would be more sensible?

Even if it's only, you have to install Linux to get a desktop to do Facebook, it would at least give the non-IT literate a chance to see how an OS is installed, plus there's a wealth of Internet guides/programming languages etc already.

[DanceswithUnix]

The BBC Micro failed to get students into computers in my generation because despite their ubiquity, few teachers knew how to work them.

If my kids want to learn something, they go to youtube and if that fails they go to wikipedia. That is how the upcoming generation work. That may be a good thing, my son is learning python at school. This means they teach him how to run a python program to make a turtle do "forwards 100, right 90 forwards 100" etc. Turtle obsessed teachers are.

[DeViLzzz]

If this gets kid interested in learning and gives them skills that they can actually use to land a job one day then great. Still companies actually have to offer people jobs instead of trying to get every dollar they can out of people's pockets and stop automating everything so that what one is able to learn with something like this device can actually allow people to be productive.