Micro:Bit Diary Alarm

I made a diary alarm that will change the icon in the front from a heart to a skull and play music when the diary is opened. To turn off the alarm, the button A must be pressed. To reset the skull icon back to a heart, the B button must be pushed.

I used a micro:bit, a book, the Microsoft Micro:bit editor.

This is the design brief I created for the project.

This is the design flowchart of the Diary Alarm. It shows that the micro:bit will display a heart and be silent when the book is closed. If the book is opened, music will play and the display will change to a skull. The last picture shows that to turn off the alarm, the A button must be pushed to stop the music, while the B button will change the display back to a heart.

This is the code I used to make the micro:bit into an alarm.

Here is a quick video of my diary alarm in action.

I did the Diary Alarm Project. I picked it because it was something I figured I could complete within the time frame as I had a busy schedule. My diary alarm is able to play music and change pictures when the front cover is opened. My project did not use any external materials or equipment. It just used the micro:bit I’m proud that I was able to code my project and use a button pushes to stop the alarm. I also was able to change the display with a separate button after the music had stopped. A problem I had when designing this project was turning the alarm on and off. I am not used to creating my own variables nor setting them to true and false. It is an added step that without, my alarm would not work. As for feedback, I was going to have my alarm sound with the light sensor. It would’ve been difficult to do as the micro:bit and is bulky and the buttons might have been pressed when the cover was closed. I’m glad that someone pointed that out, I pivoted to have my alarm based on movement. If I had programmed in Python, I would have had to spend a lot of time figuring out how to type the commands. I am not familiar with Python at all and would’ve needed much more support to complete the coding. The input, variables, and logic code would have to be learned. I would also have to be extremely careful when typing the code as I tend to make easy mistakes when typing. So the time element with Python would be greater.