micro:bit Compass

Welcome to another micro:bit Monday blog post. This week we are going to look at creating a simple compass which shows the bearing from magnetic North in degrees.

The built-in compass sensor is called a magnetometer. This can be used to measure the Earths magnetic field.

Here is how to code it.

MakeCode

1. Open MakeCode editor within your favourite browser
2. Click and drag the forever block to the left and drop it in the bin
3. Click on Basic Click and drag a show string “Hello!" block to the coding area and attach it within the on start block
4. Click where it says Hello! and type Press button A
5. Click on Input Click and drag an on button A pressed to the coding area and drop it
6. Click on Basic Click and drag a show number 0 block to the coding area and attach it within the on button A pressed block
7. Click on Input Click and drag a compass heading (°) block to the coding area and attach it within the 0 of the show number block

Your code is now ready to download to your micro:bit and test out

Completed Code

EduBlocks

1. Open EduBlocks within your favourite browser and click on micro:bit
2. Click on Basic Click on from microbit import * and drop it within the coding area
3. Click on Compass Click on compass.calibrate() and attach it under from microbit import *
4. Click on Display Click and drag a display.scroll(“Hello World”) and attach it under compass.calibrate()
5. Click on Hello World and type Press button A
6. Click on Basic Click on while True: and attach it under display.scroll(“Hello World”)
7. Click on Basic Click and drag an if True: block to the code area and attach it within the while True: block
8. Click on Button Click and drag a button_a.was_pressed block to the code area and attach it within the True of the if block
9. Click on Display Click and drag a display.scroll(0) block to the coding area and attach it within the if button_a.was_pressed
10. Click on the 0 within the display.scroll block and type str(compass.heading())

Your code is now complete and ready to download to your micro:bit to test it.

Completed Code

Python

1. Open up your favourite Python editor for the micro:bit
2. Type from microbit import * This imports the micro:bit library to use within python so we can program with the micro:bit
3. Type compass.calibrate() This tells the micro:bit to calibrate the magnetometer sensor
4. Type display.scroll("Press button A") This scrolls Press button A across the LED Matrix
5. Type while True: This create a loop that will go on forever
6. Type if button_a.was_pressed() This creates a statement to check if button A on the micro:bit was pressed
7. Type display.scroll(str(compass.heading())) This will scroll the direction the compass is facing in Degrees across the display

Your code is now ready to download to the micro:bit and test out.

Completed Code

from microbit import *

compass.calibrate()

display.scroll("Press button A")

while True:
    if button_a.was_pressed()
    display.scroll(str(compass.heading()))

Conclusion

That’s it for this week comeback next week where we discover how to use the pins on the bottom edge of the micro:bit