BASIC for the micro:bit
brucee
Posts: 245
While I write C or Tcl, when I want to build a widget on a small board I still like BASIC. It has a good mix of simplicity and built in features to take advantage of wiggling the pins.
Our BASIC is now running on the V2 micro:bit
through the same path Microsoft MakeCode uses. No external dongles. No special drivers. No SDK install.
- 64 MHz Cortex-M4F with full hardware floating point — your math runs fast
- Programs up to 320 KB in flash — we've already shipped a 206 KB user program with room to spare
- 96 KB of variable space — 24,576 variables ready to go
Sub-millisecond timing with native SysTick, plus full 12-bit ADC for analog reads
Instant interactivity
Ctrl-C interrupts a running program — one keystroke, clean prompt, no rituals
- Auto-run on power-up — your program is in flash and running before the welcome banner finishes
Direct register access from BASIC — GPIO_P0_OUTSET= 1<<21 turns on an LED
The full peripheral palette
Drive the 5×5 LED matrix with pure BASIC. Read the edge-connector ADC with ad(1). Toggle GPIOs P0 and P1 with out()
and in(). Time things with microsecond precision. Sort with the built-in quicksort or roll your own — both fly.
Built-in NRF52833.bas peripheral library exposes every register at every address, ready to embed.Boots from cold in 3 seconds and runs the user program
- Bare-metal — no RTOS, no libc bloat
Comments
Brilliantly Advanced Symbolic Instruction Code
It's not going away. None of that Python library nonsense
More info?
Lots of info on BASIC itself at https://coridium.us/coridium/helpfiles/basictools
The help manual is at https://coridium.us/files/armbasic/
I don't see any reason for us to draw pictures of the micro:bit and add them to the manual
The setupBASIC.exe will be built later this week, which will include nRF52833 files (the register definitions)
I have V2.00 boards which require a firmware upgrade to 0258 (beta), as the earlier versions did not pass UART_RX from the nRF52833
The BASIC does have an emulator that runs on a PC, you can download and install it to give it a whirl https://coridium.us/coridium/files/setupBASIC.exe
PS the microbit:bit will function a lot like the ARMstamp for reference as it is also programmed over a USB
We will also have to provide a link to the BASIC.hex file to load onto the micro:bit which has the BASIC runtime support, the compiler live on the PC
Oh it's a compiler. Have you checked out our FlexBASIC for the Props? Even the P1 has eight processors @80MHz.
I'm well acquainted with the Propellers. We have simple benchmarks we have run on ARM CPUs.
I have an RP2040 but how to get your BASIC on it?
Just got the RP2040 limping today, so not quite ready for prime time yet. If you want to be a guinea pig (hopefully not a stuck one) I can send you a couple files.
Oh sure. I am well familiar with picotool
We have made an initial release for the microbit V2 https://coridium.us/coridium/blog/basic-for-the-rpi-pico-pico-2-and-micro-bit2
And we are looking for feedback.