FAQ
IoT:bit
IoT:bit is an expansion board designed for BBC Micro:bit, aimed to improve the accessibility of Micro:bit. With IoT:bit, not only the original features can be performed easily, but also make up for the deficiency of Micro:bit – Internet access ability. Using IoT:bit with Micro:bit allows Micro:bit to access different internet resources, making it able to participate in IoT projects.
IoT:bit provides three power supply options, they are USB (5V), lithium battery (3.7V), Dry cell with battery box (AA, 1.5V*4). Users can either use one of them to power up the IoT:bit expansion board, Micro:bit and the connected sensor/actuator.
No, different power supplies should not be used at the same time. Some power supply may interfere with another power supply to cause damage, worst case may cause fire, DON’T DO IT!
According to Micro:bit’s official website[https://tech.microbit.org/hardware/powersupply/], the power chip on Micro:bit can only supply up to 120ma, that is absolutely not enough for driver IoT:bit. Please be sure to power from the IoT:bit but not from Micro:bit.
IoT:bit use UART protocol to communicate with Micro:bit, it is connected to Pin P8 and P16 through the edge connector. So Micro:bit can use Serial command to send commands to IoT:bit.
Check the direction of the Micro:bit installed on the edge connector. The side of the Micro:bit with LEDs and two buttons should be facing toward the same direction of the instruction arrow printed on board. If reversed, it will not work and may damage the Micro:bit and IoT:bit. Also, please check the power LED on the Wi-Fi Module whether it is turned or not.
IoT:bit provides a makecode extension for Micro:bit to communicate with IoT:bit. Please refer to the tutorial on https://smarthon-docs-en.readthedocs.io/en/latest/smartcity/3_getstart.html .
If you do no need smartcity module but just iot function in case, the IoT:bit extension is also available in https://github.com/smarthon/pxt-iot-bit
In the IoT:bit extension, after initializing the IoT:bit, it can return the firmware version from IoT:bit->ESP->firmware version. Showing it on the OLED display or LEDs array, if it can show up, means the communication is fine, and the firmware is working.
IoT:bit allows the user to decide to use the buzzer on the expansion board or not, so provide a switch to control the connection from Micro:bit P0 to buzzer. Check the switch at the top-right corner position, follow the icon instructure to switch it to connected position to let Micro:bit access the buzzer.
Check the switch at the top-right corner position, following the icon instructure to switch it to disconnected position. It can avoid the buzzer interfering with the signal in Pin P0.
Check the power supply output current, it is suggested to use 5V 1A power supply when using the heavy loading actuators. When using the lithium battery or Dry Cell, check their remaining power and the specification of their current output ability. The entire IoT:bit designed to operate in maximum 1A current, so the number of heavy loading actuators should be limited. Normally, the maximum 2-3 servo or 1-2 heavy actuator can be used for iot:bit. When you need to use multiple heavy loading actuators, consider using an external driver board with an independent power supply to work with IoT:bit.
here may be several reasons for the IoT:bit cannot connect to the internet.
- Router is too far away
- No that AP actually
- The typo on SSID/PWD (No space or special character)
- The battery have run out, please change to new battery or use USB to provide stable power supply to IoT:bit
- Double check your AP is in 2.4Ghz Mode, but not in 5Ghz, IoT:bit using ESP32 chip do not support 5Ghz WiFi
- Follow the best practice on using the iot:bit
i.Load the program into the micro:bit (Micro:bit not connected to iot:bit
ii. Take the USB out from micro:bit
iii. Insert the micro:bit to iot:bit
iv. Switch on the iot:bit
When compared to other wifi extension boards on the market, IoT:bit has few notable advantages.
IoT:bit using ESP32 instead of ESP8266. ESP32 is a new generation of WiFi module from Espressif. When compared to ESP8266 which is commonly used on other products, it has a great upgrade on hardware specifications, the CPU is from single core to dual core; frequency nearly double; SRAM and Flash ROM size increase for 2 and 8 times respectively. It helps to improve the performance and stability when doing internet transmission.
IoT:bit provides three types of power supply option, it can let the user choose the best method to power the device in different situations. When used in some place that is fixed and has a stable power supply, such as on a desktop, indoor room, it can use USB to power up easily. When needed outdoors, it can switch to use an AA battery holder for better portability. If using a heavy power consumption module, choosing to use a rechargeable lithium battery is a better option for saving the spending on AA battery.
PXT (MakeCode)
IoT:bit supports two common IoT platforms, which is Thingspeak and IFTTT. Thingspeak provides data integration and visualization services, giving great benefit when doing IoT projects. IFTTT provides numerous applications to control the IoT:bit, make the IoT:bit can interact with other IoT devices and resources, such as google assistant, smartTV, weather station, etc. In addition, it supports Network Time Protocol, able to get the correct time from the internet. For more IoT function, user can use http request to do it.
After IoT:bit connected to the internet, it will start listening to commands automatically without any extra setting. The way for IoT:bit to do it is send a HTTP GET request to the smarthon server, and it will keep in pending states until the corresponding command for that IoT:bit was sent to the server. Then the server will give back a response including the command to finish the GET request. To send the command, it can use the specific API from the smarthon server. Detail step of IoT:Bit perform communication please refer to https://smarthon-docs-en.readthedocs.io/en/latest/smartcity/chapter3.html
Generally, it is unique. The Device ID is the MAC address of the ESP WiFi chip. There are in total 48 bits, meaning 281,474,976,710,656 different addresses, there is extremely little chance for other people to change to or guess the same ID and control your IoT:bit.
It is represented to 0 of UNIX time,which starts the count from 1st Jan 1970 00:00:00. Since IoT:bit do not have a built-in battery to keep the chip’s timer non-stop, every boot up it will be initialized to the 0 of UNIX time, then start counting. Before IoT:bit connected to the internet successfully to get the current time, IoT:bit will base on this date and time to return the result. When faced with this issue, check the internet connection and make sure it is connected successfully. Sometimes the NTP time has not downloaded from internet yet if you are calling it just after connected to internet, so you may wait for few second before you call the NTP function.
Sometimes when you click update the extension version, the internal code may conflict with the existing project code. Please try to create a new project and use the latest version of extension to try again. Another possibility is that browser’s cookies for makecode are corrupted (which responds to save project data), in this case you may need to clear the cookies to reset all the existing data, it will remove all the projects, please be careful and do backup if needed before clear cookies.
When uploading data to thingspeak, it will go through an API provided from thingspeak. The API requires some key information such as the api_key for the channel, after thingspeak receives that request, they will verify the request and check whether it is legal. If not, the error message will be sent back to the client, which is the error code. In other words, it cannot update to the Thingspeak successfully.
The detail of error code meaning can refer to https://ww2.mathworks.cn/help/thingspeak/error-codes.html
The IoT:bit extension uses the webhooks service on IFTTT to trigger action, webhooks provide a simple API that only needs the service key then can trigger the event. However, when the service key is wrong, the IFTTT will give back HTTP status codes, which return in the IoT:bit extension.
The detail of codes meaning can refer to https://platform.ifttt.com/docs/api_reference
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