Guide

3/7/2018 SparkFun Inventor's Kit for micro:bit Experiment Guide - learn.sparkfun.com
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Experiment 0: Hello, micro:bit!
Introduction
“Hello World” is the term we use to define that first program you write in a programming language or on a new piece of hardware.
Essentially it is a simple piece of code that gives you a quick win (fingers crossed) and a first step in learning. It also gives you a
chance to make sure everything is up and running and A-OK.
For your first “Hello World” we are going to create a simple animation on the LED array that repeats forever. If you just want the
complete program, you can see it here. To see a step-by-step explanation of how we built the program, continue reading!
Note: You may need to disable your ad/pop-up blocker to interact with the MakeCode programming environment and
simulated circuit!
Building ‘Hello World’
A “Hello World” on the micro:bit is a little different than on a normal run-of-the-mill microcontroller. The micro:bit has no single LED
to blink on its own, as you would find on the Arduino or similar boards. What the micro:bit does have is an LED array! So, the
“Hello World” for the micro:bit is to draw something using the LED array!
When you open MakeCode you are greeted with two blocks: the On Start block and the forever block. The On Start block
is all of your code that will execute at the very beginning of your program and only run once. The forever block is code that will
loop over and over again…forever.
We are going to use the forever block for building this “Hello World.” We now need to start adding blocks to forever .
First, click on the Basics category. These blocks are, well, the basic building blocks of a BuildCode program. It will expand into a
number of options. Click and drag the show leds block over and place it inside of your forever block. Notice that the block is