

ARM and the BBC collaborate on a new initiative - timthorn
http://community.arm.com/groups/internet-of-things/blog/2015/03/12/arm-and-the-bbc-collaborate-on-a-new-initiative

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sp332
Earlier story:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9189937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9189937)

 _The BBC does not see Micro Bit as a rival to similar computing devices such
as Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Galileo and Kano, but rather hopes it will act as a
"springboard" to these more complex machines. ...

The final version will have a Bluetooth link enabling it to be hooked up to
other devices such as a Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is helping
to develop learning resources for it....

BBC Learning's Gareth Stockdale, who is developing the device, said: "The
BBC's role is to bring focus to the issue, and then we will withdraw from the
market." After the first million Micro Bits go out to schools, there will be
no more._

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rogerbinns
Can anyone speak as to how open the hardware is? In particular it is all
documented and with completely open drivers, and no proprietary blobs.

~~~
ctz
I don't think anybody knows about the hardware yet. The photo of the prototype
is an Atmel ATMega: not an ARM core, no BLE radio; extremely unlikely to be
involved in the final design.

I'd expect they'll use one of the Cortex-M0 uCs with built-in BLE radio (like
those made by Nordic or Cypress). Microcontrollers tend to be nicely open from
a software perspective.

~~~
snops
>I'd expect they'll use one of the Cortex-M0 uCs with built-in BLE radio (like
those made by Nordic or Cypress).

Actually, it sounds more like there will be a Freescale Microcontroller on
board:

>Both Freescale and Nordic Semiconductor are working with us on making this
initial 1 million devices a reality.

Freescale do make Cortex-M* uCs (the Kinetis range), but do not make any with
BLE, so I suspect that the main micro will be Freescale, while Nordic provide
the BLE radio. Most MBED dev kits use two microcontrollers, one to provide the
USB interface (ARMs CMSIS-DAP Protocol), and one that actually runs the code,
so the same is probably the case here with the Nordic SOC providing both BLE
radio and USB interface.

