Modkit Micro!

Our friends from Modkit (another great graphical programming environment) are running a Kickstarter campaign to release a new version, called Modkit Micro. We strongly believe that graphical programming tools are important to help a lot of people in their learning experience. And having more graphical tools gives the user more options to chose which fits better his own needs and tastes. So we want to support their effort from here, with this small post. If you want to see more, just visit their Kickstarter page...

Hexy + Minibloq

Our friend Joe from Arcbotics is running a (very) succesful Kickstarter campaign for his new robot, called Hexy. He updated the main page of his Kickstarter project with the following (the red ellipse is ours):

So this post is our small contribution to his campaing. Good luck Hexy!

Nuevo manual en PDF (y ODT) en español

Desde el lanzamiento de Minibloq.v0.81.Beta hemos estado trabajando mucho en la documentación. Por un lado, se actualizó toda la documentación online en inglés. Y ahora tenemos ya listo el manual en PDF en español. Y hay dos buenas noticias al respecto:

• Además de actualizarlo, para que refleje las nuevas características de la v0.81.Beta, se han agregado las descripciones completas de los bloques (las cuales hasta ahora estaban sólo disponibles online -en inglés-).
• No sólo está disponible el PDF, sino también sus fuentes, en formato ODT (de LibreOffice), para que el usuario que lo desee pueda modificarlo, utilizarlo como base para sus actividades de aula, o incluso traducirlo o contribuir de cualquier otra forma a la documentación del proyecto.

Haciendo click en estas imágenes se pueden descargar los documentos, en los dos formatos mencionados:

                  

Maker Faire photos!

A few days after Rodolfo (from RobotGroup) made some demoing of the upcoming Multiplo robots at the Maker Faire Bay Area, here are some photos! The whole demonstration was programmed using both Minibloq and Arduino.

The v0.81 documentation is ready!

We finally have updated all Minibloq's online English documentation, adding the new features from the v.0.81.Beta version. Here are the most important links:

1. On line documentation. Everything is up to date now!
2. On line blocks descriptions.
3. On line examples. Now the code for all the example is deployed with Minibloq, so no need to download  it.
4. Changelog and known issues.

There are also contributions from the users, with tips or troubleshooting. You can take a look to this forum thread from Pierre Segura, for example.

Enjoy!

More videos about Minibloq and Multiplo

We love to post about your work! Everyone is invited to send us links or articles sharing activities and experiencies. This way we can post about your work! There are 2 categories in Minibloq's forum: Classroom experiences and Tutorials where you can tell us about you. So here are some videos about activities in schools using Multiplo and Minibloq. Most of them are built using the Kimtech kit, made by the Universidad Tecnológica Nacional and RobotGroup with Multiplo parts:

Finally, we found this small Scribd book (in Spanish), about Arduino basics, which also mentions Minibloq: http://www.scribd.com/doc/92732075/arduinobasi#download

Maker Faire Bay Area: Robots are coming!

Very few days remains for the Maker Faire Bay Area, and here is a small advance of the new Multiplo robots (the N6.v2.0 and the upcoming N8). Of course, Minibloq will be present there too... Enjoy!

Minibloq+Multiplo @ Maker Faire Bay Area 2012

In just a week, Rodolfo Cossovich, from RobotGroup China, will be present at Maker Bay Area with some of the latest Multiplo robots. Minibloq will be there also!

Minibloq + Multiplo en Conectar Igualdad

El martes 8 de mayo, estuvimos junto a Mónica Paves, directora de RobotGroup haciendo una presentación con Minibloq y Multiplo en las oficinas de Conectar Igualdad, en Buenos Aires. Conectar Igualdad es una iniciativa gubernamental argentina dedicada a reducir brechas digitales, educativas y sociales. Entre otras actividades, ha repartido ya casi 2 millones de netbooks de forma gratuita a lo largo de todo el país y se encuentra en pleno crecimiento. Gran parte del software instalado en las máquinas es software libre. La charla, transcurrió de forma amena, casi informal y además de lo interesante que resultó el intercambio de ideas, nos hemos sentido muy cómodos. Queremos agradecer desde este blog la invitación. Ahí van un par de fotos:

Seguidor solar utilizando Arduino & Minibloq

Eloi Fores ha hecho una excelente presentación con Prezi (en Catalán). Combinando también esquemas de Fritzing y con una estética bien trabajada, este interesante trabajo comienza introduciendo las herramientas en sí mismas (Arduino, Minibloq y los distintos componentes electrónicos necesarios) y va presentando ejemplos de complejidad creciente hasta resolver el problema de un seguidor solar capaz de orientar paneles fotovoltaicos hacia el sol.  Se la puede ver dando click en la siguiente imagen:

¡Felicitaciones Eloi!
Por otro lado, queremos a agradecer también a Lucas Martín, de http://www.automatismos-mdq.com.ar por su post acerca de Minibloq.v0.81.Beta.

Thanks! (again)

I want to say thanks again to the posts about our work in the last two weeks:

• First, The last two posts (http://bit.ly/K3OyND and http://bit.ly/JEQ2Ml) from Bill Griggs at Maker Masters where about Minibloq.
• Second, I want to say thanks to Jessica Shoemaker from EEWeb, for this interview.

As always, spreading the word is very important for the project. This week I will be working on the online documentation, specially regarding the new features in the v0.81.Beta version...

Minibloq.v0.81.Beta: Full Internationalization support

You can download it by clicking on the above image, or go to the Downloads page.
Also, it may be convenient reading the changelog here. We will be working on documentation about the new features the next days...

Internationalization (i18n/L10n)

Among the structural changes made to Minibloq.v0.81.Beta is the support for Internationalization/Localization (i18n/L10n for short).  In our view, i18n involves a lot of things, to ensure a good user experience with the software. So we took our time to implement it. Here are some important points about the last Minibloq version:

• The user can change to other supported language in real time, without reinitializing the application. Just pick the desired language from a combobox, and Minibloq reloads all the necessary things.
• Even more: new language packages can be added without the need of reinitialize the program.
• Almost everything can be translated: from the menues to the block's tooltips, button captions and even the Help.
• Everyone can add translations. We used open source tool which really faccilitate the task of translating. Since the i18n was implemented using the standard GNU gettext stuff, it's  even  possible to do automatic string extraction from the sources. So we hope it will be really easy to contribute to the project with translations. The most important and helpful tool used to translate was Poedit.
• Although Minibloq now features OS's language autodetection, the user is free to manually select other languages.

Complementary with this work, we are also making a new website, with full support for internationalization. This way, even the online documentation and the examples, will be able to be easily translated by contributors to the project.  More about the new website and about how to add translations soon...