micro:bit Breakout Board Hookup Guide a learn.sparkfun.com tutorial

Available online at: http://sfe.io/t655

Introduction

The micro:bit, by itself, offers a vast array of possibilities and potential projects, considering it includes an onboard temperature sensor, accelerometer, compass, LED array, Bluetooth radio, and more. However, when you’re ready to branch out beyond those initial capabilities, like connecting to an SD card for logging, you’ll need to break out some of the pins on the micro:bit’s card edge connector. For that, we’ve got you covered with the micro:bit Breakout Board.

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SparkFun micro:bit Breakout (with Headers)

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The SparkFun micro:bit Breakout is a board that connects to the BBC micro:bit and expands the capabilities of the development…

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There’s also a version without headers, if you care to solder your own or use wires instead.

Required Materials

To follow along with this project tutorial, you will need the following materials:

Suggested Reading

If you aren’t familiar with the following concepts, we recommend checking out these tutorials before continuing.

Hardware Overview

The micro:bit Breakout board allows you to utilize all of the pins on the micro:bit and opens up some previously inaccessible communication ports, like I²C and SPI.

Top-down diagram of the micro:bit breakout board

Pins

Most of the micro:bit’s pins can be configured for one or more functions.

Power Pin

The pin listed as 3V3 is output only. When you plug in a USB cable or battery pack, 3-3.3V will be avialable on that pin to use. If you try to apply 3.3V to the pin, the board will not turn on.

LCn Pins

The pins labeled with LCn (e.g. LC1, LC8) refer to pins that are used to control the LED array on the front of the micro:bit. You can use them as GPIO, but you’ll often get weird patterns to show up on the LEDs, or when you write to the LED array, you may see unexpected behavior. If you use them as GPIO, we recommend disabling the LED display.

Hardware Assembly

Attach Headers

If you have the version of the breakout board without headers, solder some breakaway headers to the board. You can also solder wire directly to the breakout.

Build Example Circuit

To begin, let’s light up an RGB LED. Attach the micro:bit to the breakout board, place the breakout board onto a breadboard, and connect an RGB LED through 330 Ω resistors. Use the image below to aid you in wire up the circuit.

Remember, LEDs are polarized parts and can only work properly in one orientation. The longest leg of the LED goes where the black GND wire is in the circuit.

Having a hard time seeing the circuit? Click on the wiring diagram for a closer look.

Example: Cycling Colors on an RGB LED

You can download the code from the emulator, or check out the project’s page here:

Copy the .hex file to your micro:bit drive, and you should see a fancy array of colors appear on your LED!

Resources and Going Further

With the micro:bit breakout board, you can start introducing more sensors, lights, and motors into your project! For more information, check out these resources:

• Micro Bit Breakout Schematic
• Micro Bit Breakout GitHub Repository
• micro:bit Main Site
• Microsoft MakeCode
• MicroPython for micro:bit Editor

Need some inspiration for your next project? Check out some of these related tutorials:

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