Viewing micro:bit Serial Data

For our Arduino projects it's sometimes nice to see data in the Serial Monitor of the Arduino IDE.

While we love Microsoft MakeCode for micro:bit programming sometimes we miss the Arduino Serial Monitor.

The good news is... you can still use it!

To use the Arduino Serial Monitor with a micro:bit you'll need to have the micro:bit connected to your computer with a USB cable.

You'll then need to launch the Arduino software, and under the Tools menu you'll see the Port sub menu.

Select your micro:bit from the sub menu.

Under the Tools menu select Serial Monitor.

Set the baud rate to 115200 baud in the bottom right corner of the Serial Monitor window.

You should see your data coming in from the micro:bit

Note that you should not try to upload a sketch to the micro:bit while using the Arduino software. (Yes, it is possible, but we won't dive into that topic here.)

Remember, the code running on the micro:bit is not the same code you see in the sketch window in the Arduino software!

Here's a short example of how we set up MakeCode to send serial data to the computer.

Remember to have the USB cable plugged in to both the computer and the micro:bit!