Lip Syncing Characters Using micro:bits and Hummingbirds

I am quite fond of facilitating physical computing activities with my learners as I’ve discussed in Scratch and Makey Makey Across the Curriculum . For that post I created the following graphic to represent the benefits of physical computing. I think it is important to extend the use of coding microcontrollers into making physical objects for the following reasons:

Lip Syncing Characters with a micro:bit and a Servo

I was excited to find Cecilia Hillway‘s (she’s so very talented!) Lip-Syncing Characters With Micro:bit – https://www.instructables.com/Lip-Syncing-Characters-With-Microbit/. Here is her video overview of her processes:

. . . and here are some examples of what my students did over the school year and what Cecilia’s kids did this summer:

Sound on 😉
First projects from my Lip-Syncing Summer Camp class. I can’t wait to see what they come up with next!@birdbraintech #hummingbirdbit #microbit @bainbridgebarn pic.twitter.com/TAod3FZEso

— Cecilia Hillway (@ceciliahillway) July 13, 2022

Cecilia’s provided a Makecode graphic for the project:

I recreated this Makecode – https://makecode.microbit.org/_aRfexJ44aEpk

Lip Syncing Characters with a Hummingbird

A Hummingbird by Birdbrain is a kit of lights, sensors, and motors which allows students to create personally meaningful robots out of any materials. As part of her Instructables, Cecilia described her use of Hummingbird to add more features to the Lip Syncing Characters. It was a bit complicated for me so I used the kit to add a second servo to have her arm move and a flashing light to highlight my character’s name.

With the help of the folks from Codejoy, a Makecode was created for this project.

Here is the makecode – https://makecode.microbit.org/_1Ex1vYcqbF0r