Monk Makes Sensor Board for Microbit with Mu plotter

Posted on April 1, 2018 by blogmywiki

The Mu Python editor’s new plotter function continues to delight me. I connected a Monk Makes Sensor Board to a micro:bit and wrote a few lines of Python to see whether I could get some live data readings from its three sensors: sound, heat and light. And by golly, it works!

Here’s the Python program I used. I opened the REPL and plotter in Mu and then flashed this code onto a micro:bit with the sound, temperature and light sensors attached to pins 0, 1 and 2 respectively:

from microbit import *

while True:
    sleep(20)
    pin0reading = pin0.read_analog() # sound - blue line
    pin1reading = pin1.read_analog() # temperature - green line
    pin2reading = pin2.read_analog() # light - orange line
    print((pin0reading, ((pin1reading-400)*5), pin2reading))

I messed around with the temperature reading a bit to get it to scale, you could probably do a better job. The video below shows the board in action with live-plotting. It’s only (at the time of writing) £7.20 from CPC, a real bargain for three sensors in one easy-to-use board.

You can download the beta version of Mu 1.0 for your OS of choice using the links at the foot of this Github page.

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2 Responses to Monk Makes Sensor Board for Microbit with Mu plotter

  1. Ryan says:
    January 21, 2019 at 4:22 pm

    Hi,

    Thanks so much for your tutorials. I have been using them with different classes and they are fantastic. I am wondering if you can offer any insight as to how I can transmit the data from the monk makes sensor board to another microbit and then have it show on the live plotter. I have tried the following but I always get an error. With some modifications I have had the numbers show up on the REPL for one of the the three sensors but not the plotter. My students are building “mars rovers” that will drive into a new planetary zone and collect data (wirelessly).

    from microbit import *
    import radio
    radio.on()
    radio.config(channel=19) # Choose your own channel number
    radio.config(power=7) # Turn the signal up to full strength

    while True:
    sleep(20)
    pin0reading = pin0.read_analog() # sound – blue line
    pin1reading = pin1.read_analog() # temperature – green line
    pin2reading = pin2.read_analog() # light – orange line
    radio.send(str(pin0reading, ((pin1reading-400)*5), pin2reading))

    • blogmywiki says:
      January 29, 2019 at 10:22 pm

      Hi Ryan – apologies for the delay getting back to you, I get a lot of spam comments and the real ones get buried sometimes! Do you get an error message or is the problem just that the numbers don’t get plotted?

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