micro:bit Machine Learning MakeCode Simulator

The simulator extension for the micro:bit Machine Learning MakeCode extension.

This is responsible for the user interface that appears below the micro:bit board in the MakeCode simulator.

Bootstrapped with Vite, this app is a minimal implementation which essentially consists of a select element to allow users to simulate ML events using the iframe message protocol supported by MakeCode.

Building and running the simulator

1. Ensure you have a working Node.js environment. We recommend using the LTS version of Node and NPM.
2. Install the dependencies by running npm install on the command line in the checkout folder.

npm run dev

Runs the app in the development mode.

Open http://localhost:3000 to view it in the browser.

The page will reload if you make edits.

npm run build

Builds the app for production to the build folder.

Translations

We manage translations via Crowdin.

We use react-intl from FormatJS to manage user interface strings. These are stored in this repository.

In development, add strings to lang/ui.en.json and run npm run i18n:compile to update the strings used by the app.

Incorporting changes from Crowdin

Use update-translations.sh.

Build and download the Crowdin zip and unzip it to a temporary location. Note the zip itself doesn't contain a top-level directory, so on Mac/Linux use e.g. unzip -d ~/tmp/trans microbit-org.zip. Run the script passing the directory containing the unzipped translations.

The script will update the UI strings.

Updating files in Crowdin

The UI files are updated manually. Please download the existing files and diff locally to ensure the changes are as expected.

Adding a new language

This process assumes the language is already in Crowdin and has at least some translations.

Steps:

1. Add the language to the update script.
2. Update supportedLanguages in TranslationProvider.tsx.

Deployments

The editor is deployed by GitHub actions.

The main branch is deployed to https://microbit-foundation.github.io/makecode-microbit-ml-simulator/ on each push.

License

This software is under the MIT open source license.

SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT