An interview with Richard Curtin – senior director, strategic alliance, at element14 – the man responsible for manufacturing a million BBC Micro:bits, within a few months.

The BBC Micro:bit initiative involves more than twenty partners – including ARM, Microsoft, Freescale, Nordic Semiconductor, Samsung – and the company responsible for sourcing components and managing the manufacturing is element14.

BBC Micro:bit – one million are to be manufactured for October

For those not aware of the project, which launched last month, it involves about one million of the programmable devices being given free to all Year 7 children in the UK (11- to 12-year-olds) by late October (an online simulator, to help teachers get to grips with it, will be available in September).

Element14 became involved in the project – on a not-for-profit basis – as a result of its existing relationships with many of the partners, Curtin told Electronics Weekly.

“Our previous engagement with ARM, Microsoft and Samsung meant they knew our capabilities and that they’d fit well with the requirements of the [strategic alliance] group.”

Another important factor was its experience of design and manufacturing for the Raspberry Pi, he said. Both projects – and others, such as its work with the BeagleBone Black – draw on its earlier investment in the third-party manufacturing and design centres of Embest, in Shenzhen and Avid, in Ohio.

In an update on the progress of Micro:bit manufacturing he said things were still on schedule. It seems the Micro:bit is on course to hit its milestones. “Everything is going to plan, from a supply chain and capacity planning perspective.” He was quietly confident, he said.

What is involved in the manufacturing process?

Curtin said a team is deployed inside element14 to drive the Micro:bit project, with engineers in the UK also providing support to funnel the design to the related team in China, at Embest. This has made final optimisations of the design, within the specs, in terms of volume manufacturing and costs.

Element14 is basically providing value-added engineering around the final optimisation of the design, he said.

Micro Bit launch at the BBC

Curtin outlined the tight parameters for delivering the BBC Micro:bit, in terms of agreeing designs and cost constraints. Not only were a large number of software and hardware partners involved, but the aim was to deliver the Micro:bits in October, within a few months. Also there was no flexibility on cost – funding was capped to the companies’ existing contributions, made from their corporate or social responsibility budgets.

All the parties involved have worked on a not-for-profit basis, but Curtin also pointed out that all the Nordic Semiconductor Bluetooth chips and Freescale MCUs were given free by their companies, a considerable outlay in itself.

Basically, he said, element14 was a conduit between the diverse range of partners and the manufacturing teams in China, from the design optimisation carried out by Embest to the contract manufacturer IONote Electronics.

Final design lock down

Some examples where the final design has had to be tweaked and optimised? Curtin mentioned choices around the 25-LED grid on the Micro:bit, where there has been a trade-off between high-brightness and high-cost LEDs against more standard, cheaper alternatives.

Another was the battery-holder, where pricing issues also had to accommodate meeting the requirements of legislation and electronics directives.

“The very final design is now locked down”, he said, “and we’ve moved into volume production. The supply chain is kicked off. There will be no material changes to the spec between now and October.”

Raspberry Pi – manufactured in the UK at Pencoed

Note that we are talking about the initial version of the device. The BBC has plans to license Micro:bit technology to make it commercially available to the wider public. Changes to the spec are like to happen then, as lessons are learned and technologies evolve.

Micro:bit specific issues

What are the manufacturing challenges specific to the Micro:bit, Electronics Weekly asked? The project involves 25-30 active partners all adding value from their different perspectives, Curtin said. Aligning them with the final specification and testing was a challenge, combined with the locked-in production dates necessary to meet the declared deadlines. A lot of interdependencies were involved.

It was interesting, he said, to see an early delineation of the various partners between software and hardware which resolved impressively into a more unified view of the project. By the end they were all seeing the Micro:bit as a multi-purpose “solution”, rather than its constituent parts.

Bring it back home?

Electronics Weekly had to ask whether, following the example of the Raspberry Pi, manufacturing of Micro:bits could be brought to the UK.

Broadly speaking, the answer was that in this initial phase, with strict deadlines and cost limitations to deliver a million units, that wasn’t feasible. But nothing was ruled out for the future when the Micro:bit is planned to become more widely available.

Richard Curtin, element14

Curtin said that element14 was certainly not against bringing manufacturing of the Micro:bit to the UK.

Many links in the supply chain

The parties involved in the manufacturing (and delivery) process, working with element14 are:

• Embest, a wholly-owned subsidiary specialising in embedded design, based in Shenzen in China and employing around 100 design engineers.
• IONote Electronics in Guangdong, China is the contract manufacturer actually producing the product.
• ScienceScope is responsible for the final packaging and distribution of BBC Micro:bits to the schools network.

We wish them and all the other parties involved in making the delivery of the Micro:bits a reality the best of success!

Richard Curtin is senior director, strategic alliance, at element14

Alun Williams