Feature-Packed Hexagonal Magicbit Looks to Get You Up and Running with IoT and STEM Dev Quickly
Compatible with a range of programming languages including its own block-based IDE, the Magicbit packs lots of potential into a small board.
A team of three friends, all engineers, have launched a crowdfunding campaign for an educational Internet of Things (IoT) development platform with smartphone support and a promise to get beginners up and running in under 10 minutes: Magicbit.
Founded by Migara Amithodana, Anuruddha Tennakoon, and Akalanka De Silva, Magicbit has been working on its eponymous development board and supporting software platform for the past two years — and is now ready for mass production.
"Magicbit is made for EVERYONE," De Silva claims. "Students and kids can use it as a STEM [Science Technology Engineering and Maths] tool to learn innovation with technology in a practical way. Developers and researchers can use it to capture data and prototype solutions. Hobbyists can use Magicbit to find solutions for problems they are keen to solve in the world."
The heart of the hexagonal Magicbit development board is an Espressif ESP32 module, programmed over a micro-USB port to the top. Expansion connectors are included on four of the six sides, to support pluggable wire-free modules including motion, temperature, humidity, proximity, distance, tilt, and soil moisture sensors, plus infrared emitters, servo motors, and RGB LEDs.
"We removed the barriers of entry for a newbie to electronics with pluggable modules and built in features," De Silva notes. "So there's no need for jumper wires, breadboards, and soldering to develop an application."
Those built-in features in full: A color OLED display; two push-button inputs; a piezoelectric buzzer; a potentiometer; connectors and a charging circuit for a lithium-ion battery; a light-dependent resistor (LDR); and on-board motor driver. If that isn't enough, the board includes a large expansion board to the bottom and crocodile-clip connection points for breadboard-free connection to other hardware.
"Magicbit has been developed with over a period of two years, by testing out different prototypes," De Silva says. "After our beta launch in September 2020, we improved Magicbit with every production batch. We have sold about 500 units in the local market in Sri Lanka. Since the Magicbit design is tested and used, we can guarantee that this is merely not a prototype but a robust product."
The hardware is only half the story: The company promises free-to-use lessons showing how to use the board, and a custom smartphone application which can connect the phone's internal sensors — including the camera, compass, accelerometer, GPS, and more — to programs running on the Magicbit. A cloud development platform, based on Node-RED, rounds out the offering - and is provided free of charge to all users, De Silva promises.
For more advanced users, the board is also supported in the Arduino IDE, JavaScript, .NET nanoFramework, PlatformIO, MicroPython, NodeJS, Scratch, mBlock3, and Codda.cc. The company, and the community of beta testers it has built up, has already begun sharing tutorials for the Magicbit here on Hackster.io — and promises more to come.
The Magicbit is now funding on Kickstarter, with physical rewards starting at AU$40 (around $29.50) — an early bird discount equivalent to 25 per cent off the final retail price, the company promises. Fulfilment is expected to begin in October 2021.