Very nice. Does this mean that micropython will be able to do bluetooth now? The extra flash memory will be a boost for sensor-based datalogging, if only you could write to files in append mode. Is the updated micropython source tree for this available anywhere yet?
Headsup that the location of CODAL (the underlying layer that supports the micro:bit) is going to move today as part of going private to public so there will be times when that repo doesn't build (or at least, docs are out of sync with where the repos are) at some point during the day.
The MicroPython build has SoftDevice in it, including a Bluetooth bootloader so you can flash MicroPython programs using the mobile apps (betas being released today, too, see https://tech.microbit.org/software/beta/). However, we want to do the BLE API design in the open for how MicroPython will be a GAP Central or GAP Peripheral. Of course, as the code goes upstream it should also be possible to use other BLE stacks and existing MicroPython APIs, but for now our focus is on the classroom environment and getting consistency in experience on MicroPython and BLE flashing/update.
In the classroom we strongly expect people to continue using micro:bit Radio for user programs because of how easy it is to use and the way it allows micro:bits to communicate with each other.
The micro:bit radio is fantastic for most classroom cases, but I'm doing a bit of teaching around data, and micro:bits really struggle with that - between the lack of append mode for logging the data, and getting the data off them for analysis on a real computer, it's been pretty frustrating - hopefully this new version will help :)
