BASIC Birthday Jingle Contest - $50 gift card or free DVK-BL600!

In May BASIC, a revolutionary programming language, celebrated its 50th birthday. Developed in the early and complex days of computer programming, BASIC was the first programming language that allowed people to easily write and execute their own programs. Created by Dartmouth College professors, Thomas Kurtz and Jonny Kemeny, BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) was designed to be easy enough for anyone to use. BASIC made computers accessible to the average individual and made it much easier than writing in assembler language or punch cards.

Laird’s BL600 Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) modules are embedded with smartBASIC, which is a modern event driven version of BASIC that has no line numbers and has subroutines and functions just like in Visual BASIC. smartBASIC for BLE has been designed to make wireless development quick and simple, vastly cutting down time to market. The programming language enables standalone operation of modules and simplifies BLE module integration.

In celebration of BASIC’s 50th birthday, Laird is looking for developers to submit a celebratory jingle. Laird has an application that runs on our BL600 devkit which has a buzzer that can play jingles (such as the “Happy Birthday” tune attached below). The winner will receive a $50 gift card or a brand new DVK-BL600 Development Kit. Please comment on this post with any queries.

Here is a more detailed description/instruction that is currently in the application:

The frequencies provided in scale[0] are based on two octaves of the A Aeolian scale. The string variable pitch$ contains the pitch (lowercase for first octave and uppercase for the second octave).

The string variable durn$ has a number 8 or 4 or 2 or 1 which corresponds to quaver, crotchet, minim and semibreve respectively. For example, below at index 2 the pitch is A3 and the note value is a crotchet (DURATION_MS/4 ms)

// S = silence, and a to G corresponds to pitch

pitch$="ggAgCBggAgDCggGECBAFFECDC"

// 8 = 1/8th of DURATION, 4=1/4th, 2= Half

durn$="8844428844428844444884442"

For more information about smartBASIC, download the smartBASIC user guide.

Check out this article on the history of BASIC to learn more.

Click here to submit your jingle.

[audio m4a="http://www.summitdata.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/New-Recording…"][/audio]