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public-events-microbit-epdemic: Preparation

Assuming that you now have 100 or so micro:bits, assembled and glued, this part of the guide deals with getting the software onto the micro:bits, collecting their serial numbers and labelling the labelled, and ready to wear. I'm going to assume that you've cloned this repo, and are familiar with navigating around wherever you cloned it to, either through a command-prompt, or through an explorer GUI of some kind.

Flashing the micro:bit Mbed firmware

  • I'm not sure how essential this step is, but because I sometimes noticed some instability in the USB and Serial connections, I updated the firmware that manages the micro:bit's USB port. This bit is really tedious.

  • Download the latest firmware here - at time of writing, version 0247. Download the ZIP, and extract from it the micro:bit firmware, which in this case is named 0247_kl26z_microbit_0x8000.hex.

  • For each micro:bit, I suggest insert USB cable carefully into the micro:bit, then hold the RESET button (the one next to the USB port), at the same time as you plug the USB cable into a desktop or laptop.

  • On Windows: The micro:bit attaches as a drive called MAINTENANCE. Copy the hex file on to that drive. The micro:bit will upgrade and reboot itself in non-maintenance mode.

  • If you want to verify, examine the DETAILS.TXT file on the micro:bit, and check that Interface Version matches what you upgraded.

Installing the epidemic software

  • The process of flashing code onto the micro:bit is similar, but can be made much less tedious. The compiled binaries are in the bin/microbit-firmware/ folder of this repo. Updating a single micro:bit is easy enough - attach the micro:bit by USB cable to your computer, (don't hold the RESET button, as you want it in normal flashing mode), and copy the appropriate HEX file to the drive. You want one master, and many minions.

  • Alternatively, I wrote a tool to make this a bit easier...

Using the Multi-Flasher

  • You'll need Java installed to run this. I use the Java Development Kit, I suggest at present a version 8 (currently I use Java SE 8u181, Windows 64-bit version). Download from here.

  • Run MultiCopy.jar file in bin/multi-copy/ - in Windows you can double-click on it if you've got a Java 8 installed. On other platforms, or from a Windows command-prompt, something like java -jar MultiCopy.jar.

  • This basically detects a micro:bit plugged in, copies a specific firmware to it, waits for the micro:bit to reboot, and then lets you unplug it. It works by detecting the drives that are added, and is pretty simple. Incidentally, it doesn't work very well for flashing the micro:bit's USB firmware, because the drive-letter assigned in maintenance mode was often different from the one assigned in normal mode, which causes detection issues.

  • Anyway, Browse for the firmware you want to flash (probably the minion if you want to do it lots of times), tick the Enabled box, then start plugging in micro:bits, and they'll be automatically flashed.

  • Remmeber to disable/close the program before plugging in any more micro:bits.

Stickers

  • We chose to print a sticker for each micro:bit, which would give its id number, and a little message of where to send it, should it get lost and found. A little utility is included to make some images you can print, which prepares some pages for 2.5" x 1.5" sheets of labels - 21 per page.

  • Having installed java, for the default behaviour, run bin/make-stickers/MakeStickers.jar, either by double-clicking it in Windows, or java -jar MakeStickers.jar from a command-prompt or terminal. By default, it will create 5 PNG files, which when printed as full A4-size pages will land nicely on the stickers.

  • To customise the image, make an edit of bin/make-stickers/sticker.png.

  • The default behaviour is the same as running java -jar MakeStickers.jar 0 99 sticker.png page - the arguments are the first and last number to print, the background image, and the stub for the output filenames.

Serial numbers

  • We're now going to attach the master micro:bit to the serial port. This, on Windows, will require a driver. See this page, which recommends you close all explorer windows, plug in a micro:bit, and then install this driver.

  • Next, attach the master micro:bit to the serial port, and run the epidemic management utility from bin/python-gui/run.bat - the batch file simply runs python epi_manager.py. The code was developed with Python 2.7 in mind, although it may well run on more recent pythons. Get your albatross Python 2.7 installer here - I used the Windows 64-bit installer.

  • More detail on this utility in the usage document. For now, the utility should detect the micro:bit master which you plugged in. If it doesn't, check the connection, change the cable, clicking Rescan each time. If it still doesn't, recopy the master binary to it and Rescan. Or pursue the troubleshooting on the Serial Driver page. If it does detect the master, then you can click the Set Master micro:bit button in the bottom left.

  • The next page shows all the parameters for the epidemic. Ignore them and click Send Parameters - it doesn't matter for now.

  • Switch on your minion micro:bits one at a time. The serial number of the micro:bit is recorded in bin/python-gui/serials.csv, and links a long micro:bit serial number with an id (0-99). This relationship persists until you delete the serials.csv file. When you power up a micro:bit, a square on the grid will turn green, revealing the id number (either newly assigned, or remembered) forthat micro:bit.

  • Note that micro:bit serial numbers are not perfectly unique, technically speaking, but should be amply close enough unless you're extraordinarily unlucky. See here. I haven't coded any specific provision for duplicate serial numbers.

Last Online Installation.

  • Finally, make sure you have R installed. The Java slideshow depends on it for creating network graphs. Click here, choose a mirror near you.

  • Recommended: especially if you're likely to be offline when you first run an epidemic; Load R, and install.packages('statnet').