This allows you to use BBC Microbits as wireless controllers. It includes two classic multiplayer games: Pong and Tron. We also have a cool turtle demo.
One Microbit works as a server. It is connected with a PC through USB and facilitates the communication between the controllers and the game. The other Microbits act like a wireless controller. They send their state to the server over radio. The server then receives their states and communicates it to the PC (and the game that is playing on the PC) through serial with UART.
All the Microbits controllers are thin clients, they don't store any state. This makes them rubost and fast, moving all the complexity to the PC, which is several orders of magnitude faster.
- Two BBC Microbits (three if you want two controllers, four if you want three controllers, etcetera)
- Batteries for the Microbits that you want to use as controllers
- A PC or laptop to run the games on and to flash the microbits
- python3
- python3-serial
- pygame for python3 (you'll need to compile it yourself, see here)
You can compile microbit-server.py and microbit-controller.py
online at
python.microbit.org.
- Compile and download the hex files for
microbit-server.pyandmicrobit-controller.py - Flash the hex from
microbit-server.pyto the Microbit you want to use at server, by dragging it on the device in a file manager. - Flash the hex from
microbit-controller.pyto the Microbits you want to use at servers, by dragging it on the device in a file manager.
- Plug in the Microbit server using USB
- Run the game you want to play with python3 as root. You may need to
change the device path, which is
/dev/ttyACM0, to the path of your Microbit server - Enjoy :)