Papercraft Mosque with BBC Microbit

Happy Eid al-Fitr, Selamat Hari Raya to all our Muslim friends. 🕌 🌙 🎉 The government's decision to relax the years-long nationwide pandemic lock-down brings great relief 😮‍💨, especially when such an important national celebration could return to some normality within the country after two years. We at TomatoCube have been working hard to bring one of our side projects to fruition. “The PaperCraft Mosque 🕌 project” After lots of trial-n-error, we believe that we have finally reached a design that even a young Makers could easily follow! Working with our local community leaders, we hope this project will inspire teenagers 👦 in the area of STEAM(Art!) through playful making & learning.🧸 Through the use of Paper-craft as opposed to full 3D printing, we want to demonstrate a more hands-on friendly, quicker 💨 & cheaper 💰 alternative towards fabricating a moderately sized 3D construction. Another easily overlooked benefit of using paper is its easiness of recycling ♻️ after learning! Hopefully, this would promote creative material usage in maker projects & reinforce the importance of reducing waste to benefit our Mother Earth 🌏. We have deviated slightly from our initial wish-list to achieve a better fit for the new target audience. We replaced the brain/micro-controller board of the PaperCraft Mosque 🕌 with a programmable BBC micro:bit, a mini-computer (micro-controller) board employed in the current local STEM curriculum for school kids 👧. An alternative super low-cost 🧠 brain/microcontroller board powered by the CH552 (8051 core) is also in the works; this will be a perfect candidate if this PaperCraft Mosque were to be displayed permanently as a mantlepiece (without having to sacrifice a scarce 🦏 micro:bit in the process). Here is the list of functions included in this project: (1) Powered by a programmable BBC micro:bit v2 board 🧠 or the Low-cost CH552 mainboard. (2) Tone(Sound) 🎶 generation via the on-board speaker. (3) Couple of NeoPixels, 💡 for colorful lights (Four LEDs for the building & one LED for the crescent come bundled with the project kit). (4) Ambient ☀️ light level detection/measurement (LDR on the CH552 mainboard). (5) Remotely controllable with an IR remote controller. (6) Single tactile button switch and 2 additional inputs found on the mainboard (2 capacitive touch switches on the CH552 mainboard). For any inquiries, you can reach us at https://tomatocube.com or https://fb.com/tomatocube18