Hi, I am a teacher who teaches students to invent things with the Grove Starter Kit + Arduino during summer camp. We use Chrome on up-to-date Macs, for example my own laptop on which I am currently testing is running MacOS 10.14.5 Mojave.
Up until now I've had my students use the desktop IDE in combination with the Starter Kit sketchbook of example sketches available on Github. When I put it into the Sketchbook folder specified in the IDE preferences, the sketches appear in a submenu of the File > Sketchbook menu:
This behavior is optimal because the example sketches for the kit's modules are hidden in a submenu and separate from the students' own sketches, but they are still easy for my students to find.
My problem is that I would like to switch to the online IDE, but I can't figure out how to get an equivalent set-up. When I try to upload a zipped version of the Starter Kit Sketchbook folder, it seems to search out all of the sketches in the file structure of the folder and import them all into the main Sketchbook list:
This clutters up the workspace and pushes the students' sketchbooks to the bottom of the list. Also, the Starter Kit Sketchbook contains a library for the LCD module, and I can't tell if it is importing correctly or not.
I've done a lot of Googling on this problem, and I still can't seem to figure out quite how to import this Sketchbook into its own folder or set of folders. What is the typical way to handle this type of Sketchbook collection? I also tried importing into the "Libraries" section, but this has the same outcome. Or maybe there's a way to import them into the "Examples" section? Should I just stick with the desktop IDE?
Sketches that you upload are seperate already as there are no "default" sketches except in the examples from libraries.
As you are uploading your own set your students should only see those sketches.
If you are talking about the default "example sketches included with libraries then this is a slightly different matter.
Currently you cannot hide the default libs although that would be a useful feature on this occasion.
However as you have uploaded extra libs with your grove kits your students should simply select "CUSTOM" in the libs selection which would only show items you have placed there.
Am also attaching a help file (PDF) that may be of use to you for importing sketches and libs.
I think the best solution is to create a dummy library with the sketches as examples of the library. By "dummy library" I mean that the files will be formatted as a library to make the Arduino Web Editor show them as examples, but the library itself will have no functionality.
I went ahead and did this and attached the file. I also fixed the library for the LCD module. It was not importing because, unlike the Arduino IDE, the Arduino Web Editor requires even libraries in the 1.0 Arduino library format to have a library.properties file and the library did not originally have this file. After you import the attached Sketchbook_Starter_Kit_V2.0.zip to Arduino Web Editor, you should find two new libraries under the "Custom" tab of your libraries: Grove_LCD_RGB_Backlight and Sketchbook_Starter_Kit_V2.0. If you click the "Examples" button of the Sketchbook_Starter_Kit_V2.0 library you will see all the sketches.
One thing I noticed that I found a bit silly is the Grove_LCD_RGB_Backlight has a set of examples but then for some reason Seeed also has a duplicate copy of all the library's examples in their sketchbook under the "Grove_RGB_Backlight_LCD" folder (also silly that they are so inconsistent about the library name). I left this as-is, but if you wanted me to remove one of the duplicates and provide an updated .zip file I can do that easily. Just let me know which of the two copies you want removed. The Arduino Web Editor has a limit on the number of sketches and also on the amount of drive space you can use so it's necessary to be a bit more careful about waste than you would on a computer with gigabytes of hard drive space available.
ballscrewbob, thanks for your help! Showing the example code in the custom libraries does seem like the way to go. I think pert found a good way to do that.
pert, thank you so much! That does exactly what I'd want. I tried uploading your zip file and found the Custom libraries under the Library tab, along with the example code. I had tried adding a library.properties file to the original code examples, but I hadn't known about the file structure and header files necessary to make it a true library. I agree with you about the duplicate code, I'm not sure about the purpose of including those twice. I've left them in for now since I don't think we'll reach anywhere near the file limit.
I've forked the original Seeed sketchbook and adapted it to your changes:
I'll have my students download it from there and upload it to their Arduino Create accounts. I'm also a Github newb, so I've credited you in the commit comment but if there's any other way I should be crediting you, please let me know.
