Did anybody know about this?
logan996
Posts: 281
You guys are familiar with "Scratch" right? The extremely easy block oriented programming IDE (designed for kids) by MIT (http://scratch.mit.edu). Well i found a really cool Propeller Block oriented programming IDE called 12 Blocks (http://12blocks.com/) it seems to be based off scratch's look and be for the propeller exclusively, I haven't tried it yet, but Boy does it look fun! I'm thinking it would be great if kids could get interested in the prop by first using 12 Blocks then Upgrading to PropBASIC Then finally to Spin! I'm so glad the propeller is in existence!
Comments
http://forums.parallax.com/member.php?u=49776
Hanno made this!? i know he made Viewport and has done the coolst thing in the prop but i think this is one of his coolest! wow, i so hope he dosent stop making cool prop tools! (on the other hand though $50 for 12 blocks??? I havent used it yet but seems kinda steep, oh well though
Hahahhaha, look at the thread under this on the parallax fourms page! Hanno posted a new thread right under this!
Still a bit shaken from our 7.4 earthquake this morning- but thanks for the very enthusiastic remark! 12Blocks has been a work of love- I'm having a great time with it- although all the features I've added have taken way longer than I initially expected. It's slowly becoming my favorite language- it's so cool to program in 2 dimensions- x and y. When a teacher showed me Scratch and other people complained about the propeller being too hard, I knew something had to be done. I'll post some video tutorials in the coming week. In the mean time give it a try- free 30 day trial...
Hanno
I named the program 12Blocks because you can build pretty sophisticated projects using just a dozen of the over 100 blocks. By now, most of the things people want to do with the Propeller are supported by easy to use blocks- for example, if you want to draw a video sprite to a VGA monitor, just use the "draw sprite" block. You can even click on the yellow parameter region which starts up a graphical sprite editor- infinitely easier than editing a binary file. If you're missing a block you can let me know, build your own, or just use an "inline spin code" block. The block editor is as easy to use as the one in Scratch- but has many tools for power users- like function refactoring, multiple tabs, and free-form expressions. The "view values" and "view pins" debugging functionality of ViewPort is also built in...
Hanno
Did you have or witness any damage from the quake? It's been all over the news here.
-Phil
No- we thankfully didn't have any damage. We've seen very little coverage as electricity, internet have been on/off all day. I experienced the Loma Prieta earthquake and this one felt very similar. Luckily it was early in the morning, so most people were sleeping. I had stayed up late worrying about the robots but quickly realized that it was an earthquake. My house is on a hillside, with part of the top floor joining up with the ground- but our bedroom is a good 6m on stilts. Before DanceBot I spent a year adding a lower floor under the top floor- so this was the first real test of my engineering. The house felt very solid- especially in the aftershocks you could tell that once the ground stopped shaking, the house stopped. Other people have reported seeing big explosion/lights- probably transformers blowing up, I just remember that we had lost electricity even at the beginning of the earthquake. Once the initial quake was over we tried to get our kids back to our bed- but aftershocks kept coming in- many more than the Loma Prieta- even now they still happen about once an hour.
In the morning I drove to the college where the Nationals were supposed to have been held- only to see a little note "postponed"- the place is now being used as a shelter for the newly homeless. On the drive over I saw some water leaking through roads, collapsed brick walls, and long lines of cars waiting to buy gas. Must be a psychological thing- the station with the long lines attracted many more cars in the short time between me coming and going while another station had no line...
We had a beautiful clear spring day so spent the afternoon at the beach- trying to keep things normal for the kids. Saw some damage on the way there- a couple chimneys about to fall in, boulders that had fallen of a cliff, a power pole about to collapse, and a house roof that had fallen in. The emergency crews were also condemning several businesses that had suffered damage. It looks like other parts of the city have suffered much more. It's been very surreal living through this experience with the rest of the city- where we awoke to a beautiful calm morning with no damage while others had suffered so much.
Hanno
12Blocks was demostrated at the UPENE and it was really cool. Usine XBee, he had several robots having their variables update in realtime from the IDE without recompiling. Also, it interfaces well with computer controllers and has a 'world' variable domain that other units programmed with this can share. In the demo, one robot was controlled by a gamepad and three others had simple 12Block code that said "do the opposite of what robot 1 is doing" and it looked like a swarm of robots. Very cool and potentially very powerful. There also appears to be a version of viewport under the hood as well.
Chad's a superstar- he's the brains behind the TBot. He approached me almost exactly a year ago after I gave the first virtual presentation on 12Blocks at UPENE.
We're very excited about both how simple TBot/12Blocks are- and how powerful and sophisticated the combination can be. The swarm/cooperative behavior is very cool- typically found only in very well-funded research labs- soon it'll be accessible to every TBot user- see here:
http://onerobot.org
Yes, 12Blocks includes several "view" that make it much easier to debug and fine tune more sophisticated programs. You won't need these if you're just blinking led's, but when your robot has to solve a maze, follow a line at high speed, interface with sensors/actuators, etc then these tools will save you lots of time:
"view values": watch the real-time values of your global variables and graph them with in an oscilloscope-like display. Also allows changing of variables- for example tuning a PID feedback loop.
"view pins": watch the IO pin activity in real time. See the state of all 32IO pins at a glance or graphed over time in the logic analyzer graph.
"terminal": a full-feature terminal
As in ViewPort, data for all 3 views is sent continually at high speed- terminal/pin/value data are combined into packets and transmitted over the usb connection.
Hanno