Minibloq.v0.81.Beta: Sending text with new Serial blocks

Another important improvement in the next Minibloq version is its capability to send text through the Serial port (it already sends numbers):

Minibloq has been in use for several month in some schools, and we are working a lot with primary school teachers. So, based in the good experience with the DuinoBot.Kids, which features a small LED matrix display (with just 8x8 pixels), we decided to add something similar to emoticons to the terminal. This way, kids can send smiles, and other expressions through the serial port directly to the computer screen, since most Minibloq's supported boards do not have displays:

We want to enhance this kind of friendly features in the future and soon will have news about the release...

USB HID integration

Minibloq.v0.81.Beta will feature communication capabilities with HID devices. We are working on this kind of structural things that will enable the software to work not only with the commonly used USB-CDC boards, but with a lot of new hardware in the near future. The first HID board supported will be the DuinoBot.v1.2.HID:

The v0.81.Beta is near: These are some of the new features

The next version of Minibloq is approaching. Here are some of the small improvements (there are bigger ones, more about this soon...)

Minibloq will support comments:
And, as can be seen in the picture, the comments are inserted (in real time) into the generated code too:

And here are some new blocks, ideal for robotics:

And for the curious, here is an interesting small document (PDF, Spanish) from David Vilaseca about the development of the class for the Sharp IR rangers:

http://minibloq.net/Files/Doc/IRRanger.Dev.ESP.20101207.pdf

Although the class for the rangers is not yet fine tunned, it already works, and we will try improve these blocks it in future versions.

New English documentation (online) and Spanish User Manual

We have been working hard on the project's documentation since the v0.8.Beta launch. We added a Forum, an Examples page, and worked a lot on the Documentation page. This week we added new sections to that page, with links to third party documents, explanations about real time error checking, automatic variable names managing, and more. And finally, we have now a new User Manual, which by the moment comes in Spanish (although most of its content can be found in the Documentation page). But the good news about this User Manual is that we published both PDF and the ODT files (LibreOffice), so you can modify it! We encourage users to translate it to other languages, or even to include it in other documents. Here are the links (you can click on the side images). As always, if you found errors or have comments about these new documents, you can report them in the forum's Bugs category.

Of course, we were also working hard on the next Minibloq version, and will post about it soon.

Thanks!

Nuevo tutorial con ejemplos en Español / New tutorial with examples in Spanish

Un nuevo y completo tutorial en español ha sido publicado por José Manuel Ruiz Gutiérrez, a quien felicitamos por su trabajo. Nos pone felices ver que la comunidad de usuarios está aportando material y apoyando el proyecto. Aquí hay un link directo al documento (en PDF):

Guía en español de robótica / Spanish robotics guide

RobotGroup ha publicado hoy una guía de robótica básica con actividades en Arduino y en Minibloq. Todas las actividades están hechas con el robot Multiplo N6, pero son válidas en general para cualquier robot con tracción diferencial y un controlador compatible con Arduino (en este caso el N6 utiliza el DuinoBot de RobotGroup).  La guía puede descargarse del siguiente link:

http://www.robotgroup.com.ar/doc/Multiplo/N6/Guide.Robotics-1.ESP.20120105.pdf

Las primeras páginas están destinadas sobre todo a la instalación de los drivers, el software, etc., pero luego pueden encontrarse 23 actividades, que incluyen código y concisas explicaciones teóricas.

Tutorials and posts in different languages, thanks!

We are happy to see posts and tutorials about Minibloq in different languages. And as we did before, we want to say thanks and mention some of them here.

• Antonio, from Spain has been writing tutorials in Gallego (Galician). You can take a look to his very interesting educational website here.

• Gijs from the Netherlands has wrote both a post in his blog, and an entry about Minibloq in the Dutch version of Wikipedia. Gijs is also hosting the Dutch mirror to download Minibloq.

• Here is another post from the Netherlands, but in English (thanks Walter!):  http://waprile.weblog.tudelft.nl/2011/12/07/minibloq-a-visual-programming-editor-for

• And finally, a post from Germany, in German:   http://www.robodino.de/Schlagwort/minibloq

Thanks!
Julián