Have you ever seen those shirts that say: If you’re reading this you are too close? Well, I have. Kind of funny but sometimes creepy. What if you could just tape a pesky little square with a few tempting fidget buttons and some red flashing eye blinding lights and that square detected: OI! YOU ARE TOO CLOSE! Well in CSAI our teacher asked us to use the MicroBit to make a social distancing alarmand detect whether you are 6 feet or not. I worked with a partner. We used a send radio number to the other person’s MicroBit. When it reached a certain number it gave a frowny face saying your too close! When you were out of the range it gave you a smiley face. My partner and I when we tested got 6 Feet on the dot and another time we got a few inches closer than 6 feet before it flipped to a frowny. I am suspecting the reason it turned to a frowny a little late is because we covered up the back of the MicroBit. The back is the one that sends the signal so covering up it will take longer to send the signal since there is an obstacle. The reason that I am thinking this is as soon as my partner removed is hand covering the MicroBit it immediately turned to a frowny face. I fact that was a little funny was that my MicroBit was not working at all! I am coming to a conclusion now that the battery did die! Anyway, my partner and I were literally almost freaking out. I rushed over to Mr. Dembo saying my MicorBit is not working! Well… that was a little foolish of me. He asked for my USB and when he plugged it in it started working… Some challenges we faced was the transmit power. Yes, that was causing us with wonky answers. If I was 10 ft away from my partner it would turn to a frowny face! That is why we set the transmit power to one so the signal is not too strong. We thought that if we are closer it will give clearer signals and commands. Some challenges we faced was the signal strength. The signal strength ranges from -42 to -142. -42 is when the MicroBit’s are closer and as you get farther the signal strength will just keep going down. We could not find the exact formula for signal strength to a human detectable measurement so we tested some numbers and eventually came to -90. This project was really hard with the exact measurements but coding was really simple if you use what we have learned so far in CSAI. Stay tuned for the MicroBit games!!!

Listen, I am being honest here. We had no clue on how to convert the radio number into inches or centimeters. We just did many trial and errors and came to -90.

Link to the Code: https://makecode.microbit.org/_fWy51pL34hUA