Coding Ireland STEM Report 2024 Have Your Say
Microbit
Beginner
45 mins
140 points
What you need:
  • Computer/laptop
  • Microbit

Microbit step counter

A pedometer is a device that can count our steps by detecting them. In this lesson we will turn our Microbit into a pedometer and get it to display the amount of steps we've taken.

1 - Create a new Microbit project

Go to the makecode.microbit.org website and create a new project.

2 - Create the 'steps' variable

We will need to remember the amount of steps we've taken so we will create a variable called 'steps'.

3 - Setup the 'steps' variable

When we start the 'steps' should be 0. Add the following code:

let steps = 0

4 - Detect a step

Our Microbits have a sensor in them called an accelerometer and this can detect when the Microbit has been shaken. We're going to use this to detect the 'shake' of our steps and each time we detect it, we will add 1 to our 'steps' variable so we can record the number of steps we take.

Add the following code:

input.onGesture(Gesture.Shake, function () {
    steps += 1
})

5 - Display the number of steps

We need to add some code that will display the number of steps we've taken on our Microbit using it's LEDs. 

Add the following code:

basic.forever(function () {
    basic.showNumber(steps)
})

Whatever is put inside the 'forever' block will happen over and over again forever. We want to constantly display the number of steps and this is why we put the code inside the 'forever' block.

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