About the micro:bit¶
The runtime¶
The micro:bit V2 runtime provides an easy to use environment for programming the BBC micro:bit in the C/C++ language. It contains device drivers for all the hardware capabilities of the micro:bit, and also a suite of runtime mechanisms to make programming the micro:bit easier and more flexible. These range from control of the LED matrix display to peer-to-peer radio communication and secure Bluetooth Low Energy services. The micro:bit V2 runtime is proudly built on the Nordic NRF5 SDK.
In addition to supporting development in C/C++, the runtime is also designed specifically to support higher level languages provided by our partners that target the micro:bit. It is currently used as a support library for all the languages on microbit.org, including Microsoft MakeCode, and MicroPython.
The board¶
The micro:bit is a Single Board Computer (SBC) that contains an application processor, the Nordic NRF52, with a variety of on-chip peripherals. Other peripherals are connected to this chip. An interface processor is connected to the application processor and manages communications via the USB interface, including the drag-and-drop code flashing process. The interface processor does not connect to any of the micro:bit peripherals.
The nRF52 application processor is where user programs run. A single, complete application including user code, runtime code and Bluetooth stack is loaded and run directly from on-chip flash memory. All user accessible GPIO pins are provided by this processor. There is an on-board 2.4GHz radio peripheral used to provide Bluetooth and custom radio capabilities via an off-chip aerial.