I am a father of eight years old boy, he always asks me to build him a Robot, but why not to build it himself. He has an accepted knowlage with block programing, but mBlock is missing alot of important blocks for Arduino boards with make this task.
Rover extension aims to enable building simple Rover Robot with Arduino and mBlock, following are block types that Rover extension will implement:
- Infra-Red (IR) blocks, which will enable receive and decode IR remote signal. these blocks depend on ![Arduino-IRremote] (https://github.com/z3t0/Arduino-IRremote) version 0.1, which come with Arduino IDE.
To install Rover Extension, open mBlock IDE,
- From Extensions menu item
- Open Manage Extensions (short-cut Ctrl+shift+T)
- Click Available button and search for "Rover"
The current version runing only in Arduino mode. In other words, you need to click Upload to Arduino button in Arduino mode to upload and run your program. Scratch mode implementation is on the road map to enable debuging without burning to Arduino board.
On linux,
-
cd mblock_ext
-
build
Infra-Red (IR) blocks provide the following blocks,
| Block | Description |
|---|---|
| Set Remote Receiver Pin ( pin_id ) | Configure the library to run on pin pin_id, should be called after Arduion Program block and before forever block |
| Is Remote ( Key_id ) Key Pressed | check the key with key_id is pressed, return boolean value (true/false), should be used within if ... then block in forever block scope |
| Is Remote ( Key_id ) Key Released | check the key with key_id press released, return boolean value (true/false), should be used within if ... then block in forever block scope |
Infra-Red (IR) blocks functionaly depend on Arduion Timer2, which will conflict with the following block,
- play tone pin ( pin_id ) on note ( note ) beat ( beat ), you should not use it with Infra-Red (IR) blocks
- set pwm pin ( pin_id ) output as ( level ), don't call pwm on pin 3 or 11