Elecrow's Mbits Is a Micro:bit-Inspired Educational Microcontroller Board Built Around an ESP32
"Inspired" by the BBC's educational microcontroller board, this ESP32-powered clone offers some seriously tempting upgrades.
The micro:bit, a low-cost education-centric microcontroller development board originally launched in 2015, has new competition from Elecrow: the Espressif ESP32-based Mbits.
Launched in 2015 in partnership with UK broadcaster the BBC, as a successor to the computing education program, which saw the company partner with Cambridge-based Acorn to build a microcomputer, the original micro:bit used a Nordic nRF51822 system-on-chip with Arm Cortex-M0 processor to drive a 5x5 single-color LED matrix, two buttons, an accelerometer, magnetometer, and internal temperature sensor.
The micro:bit hardware was refreshed in October last year, moving to the Nordic nRF52833 — which increased the RAM to 128kB from 16kB, the flash storage to 512kB from 256kB, and upgraded the radio to Bluetooth 5.0 Low Energy (BLE). The new board also introduced two new sensors, in the form of a MEMS microphone with LED indicator and a touch-sensitive logo, plus an on-board speaker.
The Elecrow Mbits, brought to our attention by CNX Software, looks to compete with the latter - but drops the Nordic chip for an Espressif ESP32-WROVER-B module soldered on the rear. As a result, the board's specifications are vastly improved: The Mbits has 8MB of RAM, 4MB of flash storage, and adds 2.4GHz Wi-Fi on top of its inspiration's Bluetooth connectivity.
Roughly the same pin-out is kept on the board's edge connector, in theory offering full compatibility with existing micro:bit add-ons, though it lacks the notched crenelations for secure fixing of crocodile clips. The 5x5 LED matrix is copied on the front, but has moved to RGB LEDs in place of the single-color LEDs found on the original micro:bit.
The shift to a new architecture does, however, mean a lack of software compatibility: Where the micro:bit is designed to be programmed in Python, Scratch, and MakeCode, the Mbits comes with support for the Arduino IDE and a Scratch-based visual development language dubbed Letscode.
The board is now up for sale on Elecrow's web store, priced at $14.90 — a couple of dollars cheaper than the real micro:bit.