micro:bit Bluetooth UART service and Animal, Vegetable or Mineral

James Devine (@James_A_Devine) of Lancaster University recently implemented Nordic Semiconductor's UART service for Bluetooth low energy on micro:bit. At the time of writing the code hasn't yet been released into the world of mbed but it will, have no fear.

The UART service provides a simple emulation of serial data communications over Bluetooth low energy. It's great for exchanging arbitrary byte arrays in either direction between peer devices. In our case one of those peers is the marvellous BBC micro:bit of course.

I tested and will be documenting the new service on Lancaster University's micro:bit runtime site and have just finished implementing a classic two player guessing game "Animal, Vegetable or Mineral" for Android which makes use of the service. It worked a treat and you can see a video of the application in action on my micro:bit page.