Micro:bit boards are brilliant little platforms.

I needed a fun replacement for a three minutes hourglass timer and imagined a device working with what I had at hand.

Since I wanted to be able to reuse my Micro:bit board for other purposes, soldering wires to connect things like a button, a switch and a battery was a no-go. Until I came with an idea: building some kind of craddle to connect to the Micro:bit ports without soldering them.

And that's the nice part of my design: the Micro:bit connects to whatever component you want without any direct soldering. I solder brass fasteners to the components. And brads connect to the Micro:bit, just touching the ports. That way you just slide the Micro:bit board in the holder to make it connect to the components. And you can remove it and reuse it for other projects as you want.

My project is a 3 minutes timer. Three minutes is the default time. Shake it and it's a two minutes timer. Shake it again and it's a one minute timer!

A demo and step-by-step building instructions is available here: https://youtu.be/lHQFzX9xagM

The brads system can be used for any other project without having to sacrifice a Micro:bit board.

This project only uses the 3V, Ground and #0 ports but the Connector and Micro:bit-Holder parts can be used to connect any other available ports.

Parts list:

• PLA
• one BBC micro:bit™ v2 board (I use v2 because it can play sound without any external speaker)
• short brads (brass fasteners)
• one arcade-style push button
• one switch button
• one coin-battery holder
• one CR2032 3V coin battery
• wires and solder

Some references on Amazon:

Micro:bit board Coin battery holder Brads Arcade push button Switch button

My code for the Timer can be found on GitHub.