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...

Minibloq in China

It has been some time since my last post. But there is a good reason: I traveled to China for 3 weeks. It was a really nice experiencie! And among other tasks, together with Ing. Rodolfo Cossovich, we presented there Minibloq and Multiplo in different places. By other way, we are making some agreements in order to add more support to open source hardware from Chinese companies, like Seeedstudio and DFRobot. We were also kindly invited by professor Zhao Qian from the University of Nanchang, as can be seen in the following pictures:

Here are some pictures about our visit to Seeedstudio and the talk at their hackerspace in Shenzhen:

I'm also very happy because we finally met David Li and He Qichen in Shanghai, creators of Ardublock, another great graphical programming environment for Arduino compatible controllers. David is also one of the cofounders of Xin Che Jian, the first hackerspace in Shanghai (which is an awesome place!):

So what else were we doing in China? I'm sure there will be more news soon, but we are working on something good about open source robotics, which I know will also be good for the Minibloq project. By now, here is a picture of the new Robotgroup's Shanghai office:

Now, I'm going back to work on the next v0.81.Beta release...

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...