In a way, Agilent represents the most grassroots electronics parts of HP from before they became overly invested in laptops and fell.
This is the cutest product name ever.
Since 1992, Mr. SQUID has been the standard educational demonstration system for undergraduate physics lab courses.
YBCO device, runs on liquid nitrogen.
This is how electronic circuits are normally prototyped!
Once you validate them like this, the next step is usually to move on to printed circuit boards for more reliable production setups.
Breadboards are a thing of beauty and wonder.
Point-to-point constructions on woden boards
. Source. Predecessors to breadboards from where the name came. A thing of beauty, so vintage. You could actually write stuff on those with a pencil!Breadboards - Trash or Treasure? by Keysight (2020)
Source. Bluetooth support: not enough RAM for it, though in principle its chip/transceiver could support it! microbit-micropython.readthedocs.io/en/v1.0.1/ble.html
Supported editors: microbit.org/code/
Bibliography:
Microbit simulator using some Microsoft framework.
TODO the Python code from there does not seem to run on the microbit via
uflash, because it is not MicroPython.support.microbit.org/support/solutions/articles/19000111744-makecode-python-and-micropython explains.
forum.makecode.com/t/help-understanding-local-build-options/6130 asks how to compile locally and suggests it is possible. Seems to require Yotta, so presumably compiles?
When plugged into Ubuntu 22.04 via the USB Micro-B the Micro Bit mounts as:e.g.:for username
/media/$USER/MICROBIT//media/ciro/MICROBIT/ciro.Loading the program is done by simply copying a The file name does not matter, only the
.hex binary into the image e.g. with:cp ~/Downloads/microbit_program.hex /media/$USER/MICROBIT/.hex extension.Identification: kitronik.co.uk/blogs/resources/explore-micro-bit-v1-microbit-v2-differences The easiest thing is perhaps the GPIO notches.
To use a prebuilt firmware, you can just use What that does is:
uflash, tested on Ubuntu 22.04:git clone https://github.com/bbcmicrobit/micropython
cd micropython
git checkout 7fc33d13b31a915cbe90dc5d515c6337b5fa1660
uflash examples/led_dance.py- convert the MicroPython code to bytecode
- join it up with a prebuilt firmware that ships with uflash which contains the MicroPython interpreter
- flashes that
To build your own firmware see: Compile MicroPython code for Micro Bit locally on Ubuntu 22.04 with your own firmware
Compile MicroPython code for Micro Bit locally on Ubuntu 22.04 with your own firmware by 
Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-27
Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-27TODO didn't manage from source Ubuntu 22.04, their setup bitrotted way too fast... it's shameful even. Until I gave up and went for the magic Docker of + github.com/bbcmicrobit/micropython, and it bloody worked:
git clone https://github.com/bbcmicrobit/micropython
cd micropython
git checkout 7fc33d13b31a915cbe90dc5d515c6337b5fa1660
docker pull ghcr.io/carlosperate/microbit-toolchain:latest
docker run -v $(pwd):/home --rm ghcr.io/carlosperate/microbit-toolchain:latest yt target bbc-microbit-classic-gcc-nosd@https://github.com/lancaster-university/yotta-target-bbc-microbit-classic-gcc-nosd
docker run -v $(pwd):/home --rm ghcr.io/carlosperate/microbit-toolchain:latest make all
# Build one.
tools/makecombinedhex.py build/firmware.hex examples/counter.py -o build/counter.hex
cp build/counter.hex "/media/$USER/MICROBIT/"
# Build all.
for f in examples/*; do b="$(basename "$f")"; echo $b; tools/makecombinedhex.py build/firmware.hex "$f" -o "build/${b%.py}.hex"; doneThe pre-Docker attempts:
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:team-gcc-arm-embedded
sudo apt update
sudo apt install gcc-arm-embedded
sudo apt install cmake ninja-build srecord libssl-dev
# Rust required for some Yotta component, OMG.
sudo snap install rustup
rustup default 1.64.0
python3 -m pip install yottaThe line:warns:and then the update/
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:team-gcc-arm-embeddedE: The repository 'https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/team-gcc-arm-embedded/ppa/ubuntu jammy Release' does not have a Release file.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.sudo apt-get install gcc-arm-embedded fails, bibliography:Attempting to install Yotta:or:was failing with:Running:did not help. Bibliography:
sudo -H pip3 install yottapython3 -m pip install --user yottaException: Version mismatch: this is the 'cffi' package version 1.15.1, located in '/tmp/pip-build-env-dinhie_9/overlay/local/lib/python3.10/dist-packages/cffi/api.py'. When we import the top-level '_cffi_backend' extension module, we get version 1.15.0, located in '/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/_cffi_backend.cpython-310-x86_64-linux-gnu.so'. The two versions should be equal; check your installation.python3 -m pip install --user cffi==1.15.1From a clean virtualenv, it appears to move further, and then fails at:So we install Rust and try again, OMG:which at the time of writing was
Building wheel for cmsis-pack-manager (pyproject.toml) ... error
error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'cargo'sudo snap install rustup
rustup default stablerustc 1.64.0, and then OMG, it worked!! We have the yt command.However, it is still broken, e.g.:blows up:bibliography:
git clone https://github.com/lancaster-university/microbit-samples
cd microbit-samples
git checkout 285f9acfb54fce2381339164b6fe5c1a7ebd39d5
cp source/examples/invaders/* source
yt clean
yt buildannot import name 'soft_unicode' from 'markupsafe'Official support is abysmal, very focused on MicroPython and their graphical UI.
The setup impossible to achieve as it requires setting up the Yotta, just like the impossible to setup Compile MicroPython code for Micro Bit locally on Ubuntu 22.04 with your own firmware setup.
So we just use github.com/lancaster-university/microbit-samples + github.com/carlosperate/docker-microbit-toolchain:.hex file size for the hello world was 447 kB, much better than the MicroPython hello world downloaded from the website which was about 1.8 MB!
docker pull ghcr.io/carlosperate/microbit-toolchain:latest
git clone https://github.com/lancaster-university/microbit-samples
cd microbit-samples
git checkout 285f9acfb54fce2381339164b6fe5c1a7ebd39d5
# Select a sample, builds one at a time. The default one is the hello world.
cp source/examples/hello-world/* source
# Build and flash.
docker run -v $(pwd):/home --rm ghcr.io/carlosperate/microbit-toolchain:latest yotta build
cp build/bbc-microbit-classic-gcc/source/microbit-samples-combined.hex "/media/$USER/MICROBIT/"If you try it again for a second time from a clean tree, it fails with:presumably because after Yotta died it started using GitHub as a registry... sad. When will people learn. Apparently we were at 5000 API calls per hour. But if you don't clean the tree, you will be just fine.
warning: github rate limit for anonymous requests exceeded: you must log in Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project
Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
Intro to OurBigBook
. Source. We have two killer features:
- topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculusArticles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
- a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
- a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
Figure 1. Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page. View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivativeVideo 2. OurBigBook Web topics demo. Source. - local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
- to OurBigBook.com to get awesome multi-user features like topics and likes
- as HTML files to a static website, which you can host yourself for free on many external providers like GitHub Pages, and remain in full control
Figure 3. Visual Studio Code extension installation.
Figure 4. Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation.
Figure 5. Web editor. You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.Video 3. Edit locally and publish demo. Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.Video 4. OurBigBook Visual Studio Code extension editing and navigation demo. Source. 
- Infinitely deep tables of contents:
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact