Howto incorporate Scratch programing to interface with Arduino in classroom

Projects Programming
1

Hi
I am sure this topic has been kicked around to death, but to be honest, I started to look but realized with 1187 topics it was a longer slog than I could do.

I am working with students that are interested in programming, and I have started them on scratch 2.0. There is some interest in being able to move it to hardware control.

I have been seaching the web, but every solution I seem to try, has shortfalls, as it fails to load, because I have more than one com port declared, it was designed to work with only a certain manufactures sensors, or it gets very arcane, and I can not determine by the notes, how to get it to work.

Is there a particular software environment that has been recommended by either the scratch.mit team or from your own experience that would allow me to maximize ease of use, generalized sensor control, and can be used by students that have just started to learn about programing. (I know you are all laughing)

Thanks

2

The picAxe is pretty good, with an interpreted BASIC on board. They used to have a flowchart programming language.

3

know you are all laughing

Yep.

4

Look into Lego Mindstorm. It has a GUI for programming and it comes with sensors & motors.

5

Hi,
with Scratch2, you download Firmata in Arduino and use something like s2a : GitHub - technologiescollege/s2a_fr: Scratch2Arduino : permet le pilotage d'une interface Arduino par blocs Scratch2. Cette version portable pour Windows est modifiée pour automatiser son installation/utilisation. L'interface graphique peut être traduite !
I made this interface only for Windows, to help young kids to use Alan Yorink's s2a by themselves.

with drag n'drop you can use BlocklyDuino : http://www.technologiescollege.fr/blocklyduino/apps/blocklyduino/index.html
Download on my github or from original BlocklyDuino repository.
So you can translate everything. It exists different version (Bitbloq, Anybit, etc).

Or MakeBlock is creating a special "Scratch2 + code" version, they'll release it on 17th march : http://mblock.cc/

Regards.