- Sun Aug 20, 2017 5:34 pm
#195904
I love the idea of the micro:bit and I just bought a dozen of the inventor's kits for a class that I'm teaching this Fall. As I'm preparing for the class, I'm starting to worry that the kit is setting up my students for failure. The micro:bit docs say that the GPIO pins can provide only 5ma of current http://tech.microbit.org/hardware/edgeconnector_ds/ -- or .5ma, depending! http://www.iot-programmer.com/index.php ... ?showall=1). If that's the case, I imagine even the LEDs supplied in the kit potentially causing the pins or board to burn up. I've been reading stories of teachers having a very high rate of failure with these boards and it most often seems related to drawing too much current (eg: http://www.suppertime.co.uk/blogmywiki/ ... bit-worry/). There's also a servo supplied with this kit - and a Sparkfun guide that shows it being powered by the 3.3V pin on the micro:bit. This page says that you may only be left with 90ma total available from the board's power supply: http://tech.microbit.org/hardware/powersupply/. That does not seem like enough for the servo, but I can't tell without measuring since the current draw isn't listed on the product page. This all seems a bit scary since I don't have the budget to replace boards and I'm basing the semester-long curriculum around each student having a kit. Am I wrong to be worried?
Rob
Rob