I bought an Espruino board while back because it allowed you to code in JavaScript using a neat chrome add on – a web ide and then flash your device directly. I was also intrigued to se that there was firmware for other boards such as the Micro:bit.
Download the Espruino firmware from http://www.espruino.com/Download . The download is a zip file with support for many platforms, extract it on your PC and locate the microbit hex file, my version was 1.87 so it was called espruino_1v87_microbit.hex.
To flash onto your micro:bit:
- Plug your Micro:bit into your PC. A drive called
MICROBIT
should appear - Copy the
.hex
file for Espruino to the root of that drive - The yellow LED on the micro:bit will blink quickly for a few seconds
- The Espruino firmware is now installed
There is an online IDE and if you have Google Chrome and an app that can be added – Espruino Web IDE . I use Chrome so the latter is what I use.
Code Examples
Display a message if a button is pressed in the IDE console
setWatch(function() {
console.log("Button 1 Pressed");
}, BTN1, {repeat:true, debounce:20, edge:"falling"});
Press the button and you should see something like this
Button 1 Pressed
Button 1 Pressed
Button 1 Pressed
Button 1 Pressed
>
Now to scroll some text on the Micro:bit leds
g = Graphics.createArrayBuffer(5,5,1);
g.flip = function(){show(this.buffer);};
var x = 0;
setInterval(function()
{
x++;
if (x>50)x=0;
g.clear();
g.drawString("Microbit",5-x);
g.flip();
}, 150);