Does anyone know why there is a conflict between “Bluetooth” extension in MakeCode for Microbit and the 51 bit Colorbit extension for the LED array ? I would like to use both but one extension requires the removal of the other. Help please.
The neopixels require really precise timing, which can’t be done (at least not easily) while using Bluetooth on the v1. The ColorBit extension is actually using Microsoft’s ws2812b extension v.0.0.4, which is what disables bluetooth.
There may be some way to do updates to get it to work well with the v2. The pxt-ws2812b extension disables interrupts, which may not be allowed with bluetooth and/or would make bluetooth less reliable, but the v2 may be able to do some other tricks that would avoid that need…maybe.
Bill
Thanks for the excellent reply, @bsiever . I had heard that Colorbit used some programming different from our other ‘neopixel’ arrays but did not know the details. This is great info. There are so many other functionalities that Micro:bit V2 allows that our kids are just now learning we won’t bother with Colorbit complexity. I see that V2 BLE 5.0 works much better than V1.5 ; the fact that we seem to need only one makecode program which works with both iOS and Android and Bluetooth controls is a great improvement .
I recently ran into the same BLE conflict but with an Edu:bit by Cytron which has four Neopixels on one of the included modules.
Thanks to your explanation I was able to simply delete that bit from their extension and the rest of the board and modules now work fine in combination with BLE (your blehid pxt in my case).
(the fork is here in case anybody runs into the same requirements/issue with the Edu:bit)
@Stev, I’m glad you were able to update the extension!
I’m also happy to hear that the blehid extension is being used! If you have a chance, please share what you’re using blehid to do.