Top Highlights

• means that anything you do in your program, such as counting the number of times a button is pressed, will be forgotten if you reset the BBC micro:bit or remove and reinsert its power cable.
• These buttons are technically known as a momentary switch. These are different to the switches you might use to turn on a light, which are known as latching switches or toggle switches. A momentary switch stays ‘on’ only as long as you continue to push it down, while a latching switch goes from ‘off’ to ‘on’ and stays there until you push it again.
• The five largest pins, sometimes referred to as pads or rings in reference to their shape, are labelled on the front of the board: 0, 1, 2, 3V, and GND. The first three are the BBC micro:bit’s major input output pins themselves, while the latter two provide power and a ground connection to complete any circuit you build.
• Loading a program onto the BBC micro:bit is known as flashing, after the type of memory the BBC micro:bit uses for its storage: flash memory. More information about flash memory can be found at the end of this chapter, but for now all you need to know is that when the BBC micro:bit appears in the same way as a storage device on your computer; it’s ...
• Traditionally, flashing a microcontroller on a board like the BBC micro:bit requires specialist software that has to be installed on every computer on which you want to program. The BBC micro:bit, though, is significantly simpler: when you have a program you want to load, simply drag it from its folder on your computer to the BBC micro:bit, and it ...