The diagrams below show the assignation of the micro:bit pins. On the V2 board revision Pin 9 is no longer jointly shared with the LED display, but Pin 8 and Pin 9 can be configured for NFC (though this is disabled by default).

The source file for the pinout table is held in CSV format. You can load this into a spreadsheet and sort and filter it in any way that makes sense to you. There is also a zipped Python script in this folder that you can download to re-generate the markdown table version of the pin map used on this page, from the .csv file.

There are also some nice ideas that have surfaced in the community such as using just the right size of countersunk or cheese-head bolt, or even 3D printed inserts.

Pin outgame

Kitronik BBC micro:bit CAD Resources This page contains a range of resources that can be used to create online resources or 3D printed designs

microbit.pinout.xyz is a fantastic resource for further information on the micro:bit pins and how they are used by some popular accessories

Datasheet

At a pinch, it is also possible to use an old PCI edge connector from a PC motherboard, as the pitch is the same (but it is slightly wider).

However, pinhole cameras had a severe problem: they lost too much light, making it difficult to use them in dark environments or when an object is moving in the scene. A lens is the update over the pinhole, allowing the focusing of light rays rather than blocking them out to create a focused image. This came at a cost: you couldn’t keep the whole scene in focus, as the bending of light was governed by the lens design. But the lens is the workhorse of the modern camera. Its size and shape govern the optical properties of the system.

The first part of a camera which interacts with photons of light from the environment is the optics of the camera. Of course the first camera had no optics or lenses, just a singular hole (called a pinhole) which blocked out rays of light except for a single ray passing through the center of the hole. This formed an inverted image and gave rise to the word “camera obscura” or dark chamber in Latin. Pinhole cameras were used extensively throughout the Renaissance period.

Pico pinout

The DAL DynamicPWM driver (and the underlying Nordic timer peripherals) dictate that PWM can only be active on 3 pins simultaneously. Any attempt to allocate a 4th pin for PWM use, will disable one of the existing PWM pins.

Can you help to find or design a better connection solution to the micro:bit edge connector? Share your designs and discoveries with us!

NOTE 3: The pin marked ‘ACCESSIBILITY’ is used to enable/disable an on-board accessibility mode, and should not be used for anything else (even though it can be used as a GPIO for testing). Future versions of the official micro:bit editors may remove the ability to write to this pin.

These pins are allocated to the I2C bus, which is used by both the on-board motion sensor. It is strongly suggested that you avoid using these pins for any function other than I2C.

Buttons are hooked into the system timer in their constructor for regular debouncing. However, if you want to completely remove this feature and use the physical pins for other purposes, you can delete uBit.buttonA, it will call the C++ destructor and de-register the button instance from the system timer, effectively disabling all DAL activity with that pin. It is then possible to use a MicroBitPin instance around the physical pin name to control it directly without interference from the DAL.

Integrated circuit

NOTE 4: The BBC suggest in the safety guide, that the maximum current you can draw from the whole edge connector at any one time is V190mA. This is set based on the 30mA budget for on-board peripherals, and the fact that the on-board regulator of the KL26 when powered from USB is rated at a maximum of 120mA. On the latest board revision the maximum current is V2270mA, though it is possible that the on-board mic and speaker can draw more current, so this value is TBC.

Another example is using natural phenomena such as water droplets on a pane of glass. Researchers from University of Bonn were able to reconstruct 4D information about light from how light bends through water droplets, allowing them to recreate new views of the scenes from different angles.

The 3V and GND rings have guard strips either side of the big rings, to avoid any degradation of device performance due to slipping crocodile clip connections. Care should be taken on rings 0, 1 and 2 to avoid shorting crocodile clips against adjacent pins, which could cause some slight interference with the pattern currently displayed on the LED matrix, or introduce some inaccuracies in the light sensing readings.

Cameras have evolved quite a bit over the past few centuries in the way they capture, record and interpret light. From pinhole cameras to camera lens options and now computational cameras, camera optics are quickly evolving to allow us to develop more quality, useful photos than ever before.

Raspberry Pi pinout

2D CAD drawing This drawing has all the key micro:bit dimensions, including the pin spacing of the various pins of the edge connector on the micro:bit board.

There is a dedicated page on power supply capabilities and parameters, which better defines how you can use the GND and 3V rings

Computational cameras go beyond the traditional optics of a lensed system to recover more information from the visual environment. Changing the optics of the camera can include introducing new optical layers which mix rays of light in special patterns that can be decoded later. Light scatters, bends, and reflects at these optical interfaces, and this physical knowledge can be used to infer information about the light paths traveled in the scene to the camera.

Ecu pinout

These pins are assigned to the two on-board buttons. In their default setup with all the standard high level languages, there is a global uBit instance containing: uBit.buttonA, uBit.buttonB and uBit.buttonAB.

These key GPIO parameters are transcribed directly from Section 6, 7 and 8 of the nRF52833 Datasheet, and provided here as a handy reference.

Computation is the new lens, and we can utilize more unusual lenses and optical layers in our cameras while extracting pretty pictures, and even more useful information from the resulting captures.

It is possible to disable the DAL services that use these pins as the I2C bus, but the motion sensor device will still be connected to the bus, and may try to interpret the signals as data payloads, which could create some undesirable side effects on the SDA and interrupt pins. There are 4K7 pull-ups fitted to both pins on the board, so the best use for these two signals is to add other I2C devices.

NOTE 2: A common way that the maximum pin voltages can be exceeded, is to attach an inductive load such as a speaker, motor, or piezo sounder directly to the pin. These devices often have significant back-EMF when energised, and will generate voltages that exceed the maximum specifications of the GPIO pins, and may cause premature device failure.

Only the pins on the front are connected to signals. The back rings are connected to the front rings, but the back small strips are unconnected.

Connector

These pins are coupled to the LED matrix display, and also its associated ambient light sensing mode. To disable the display driver feature (which will automatically disable the light sensing feature) call the DAL function display.enable(false). To turn the display driver back on again later, call the DAL function display.enable(true).

For instance, lensless cameras utilize diffractive masks or coded apertures above the camera, allowing the computer to refocus a blurry image after capture and enabling applications such as 3D photography. These cameras can be made ultrathin and are useful for space-constrained applications where a lens would be too bulky to deploy.

Note also that the LED 3x9 matrix connects LEDs with associated resistors across these pins, so you should take that into account when designing circuits to use these pins for other purposes.

The main reason you might choose to use these pins for other purposes would be if you were designing your own micro:bit variant without any I2C devices, and then it would free up two more pins for other purposes.

The pin marked ‘ACCESSIBILITY’ is used to enable/disable an on-board accessibility mode, and should not be used for anything else (even though it can be used as a GPIO for testing). Future versions of the official micro:bit editors may remove the ability to write to this pin.

Pin OutMaster

These key GPIO parameters are transcribed directly from Section 6, 7 and 8 of the nRF51822 Datasheet, and provided here as a handy reference.

Functions in brackets should be used with caution, as other features of the device may become unstable, degraded or non operational, if their normal use is not disabled in the software first.

The smaller strips spaced at 1.27mm on the edge connector have additional signals, some of which are used by the micro:bit, and others that are free for you to use. There are a number of external PCB connectors for purchase with an 80w 1.27mm pitch that can be used to easily access these extra pins.

Pins that are marked with brackets around functions, require the default functionality for that pin to be disabled, before other functions can be used.

There are 25 strips/pins including 5 rings for using with 4mm banana plugs or crocodile clips. 3 of these rings are for general purpose input and output (GPIO) and are also capable of analog, PWM and touch sensing, and two are connected to the micro:bit power supply.

There are a number of suppliers of edge connector for the BBC micro:bit, in various forms, such as a right angle through-hole, a stand-up through-hole and a stand-up surface mount.