New French documentation (Thanks Jean Pierre!)

We want to say thanks to Jean Pierre Raumer for his new translations to French of Minibloq and Multiplo documenation. Here are some links:

• Minibloq's user manual (doc)
• Minibloq's blocks (doc)
• Minibloq's examples (doc)

Please note that some of the pictures in these docs may not be visible without internet conection, since the docs may be including them as links.

Jean Pierre also translated Multiplo tutorials (written by Rodolfo Cossovich, and with help of Fabián Novell), and we added them in Multiplo's Doc Center (most of these tutorials include examples made with Minibloq):

• http://multiplo.org/tut2
• http://multiplo.org/tut3
• http://multiplo.org/tut4
• http://multiplo.org/tutorial-5-follow-the-light
• http://multiplo.org/tut1 (this one is just about Multiplo, and does not cointain Minibloq code)

I also want to take this opportunity to say thanks to the guys at Sparkfun for their post about Multiplo (where Minibloq was also mentioned), a few weeks ago.

Minibloq+Multiplo @ Shanghai Maker Carnival

Multiplo was invited to participate in the Shanghai Maker Carnival 2012. Rodolfo Cossovich was there showing the upcoming Multiplo kits, which can be programmed both with Minibloq and the Arduino IDE:

Minibloq en la Provincia de San Luis, Argentina

Minibloq está siendo distribuido desde fines del 2011 en escuelas públicas de la Provincia de San Luis, Argentina, en el marco del programa gubernamental Todos a la Robótica. A la fecha, más de 1200 kits Multiplo, producidos por RobotGroup fueron entregados, y están siendo utilizados por chicos de entre 6 y 12 años:

Minibloq en el "Encuentro Linux Curicó 2012", Chile

Hace una semana, pudimos participar del Encuentro Linux 2012, llevado a cabo en la Universidad de Talca en Curicó, Chile. Allí pudimos exponer sobre Minibloq + Multiplo, y hablar de hardware open source. Aquí hay un link al programa del evento.

Queremos agradecer desde aquí la invitación (¡gracias Rogelio!) y la hospitalidad recibidas.

We are at Kickstarter!

Minibloq is open source software. Arduino(R) and its accesories are open source electronics. Now it's time to have truly open source mechanics. What does this mean? When making mechanical parts, the blueprints are not always enough.  Meet Multiplo: an open building system designed so each part can be reproduced by simple tools, like laser cutters, 3D printers or CNC mills. We call this Fab Lab Compatible and allow users to start making their own parts and share them. No needs for moulds, extrussion, or any other expensive manufacturing techniques. In Multiplo, hacking is welcome! Multiplo parts will be published as open source (DXF files). Please take a look to Multiplo's Kickstarter campaign:

Minibloq translated to Croatian!

Minibloq has been translated to Croatian! We want to say thanks to  Robert Sedak for his great work. He has translated even the tooltips. Here is a screenshot:

You can download the zip file containing the Croatian translation from this link. Please follow the following steps to install it:

1. Uncompress the zip file into a temporal path. For example, if you uncompress this file in C:\Temp, you should end with a folder called C:\Temp\Minibloq.

2. Find Minibloq's path (for example: C:\Program Files (x86)\Minibloq.v0.81.UP2). Inside that directory, you will find the folder Components. Copy the whole Minibloq uncompressed folder (in our example C:\Temp\Minibloq) directly into the Components folder. You will see a message box like this:

3. Click Yes. 

4. It's possible then that the OS will show another message box like this:

5. Click Continue.

6. Ready! Now you can run Minibloq.

Enjoy!

Water saving robots in Australia, programmed with Minibloq

Andrew Lawrance told us about a very interesting development he and the students at the Bartle Frere State School are doing. Located in Queensland, Australia, the school won a Reef Guardian "Water Warriors Award" (http://www.environment.gov.au/minister/burke/2011/mr20111111.html) in 2011, for their efforts to reduce water consumption. There, they built an Arduino controlled "water saving robot", and programmed it using Minibloq. Andrew and his students are also working with mobile robots and Minibloq:

Here is a nice article on a local online magazine from Queensland: http://staq.squarespace.com/storage/STAQ38-2%20Digital%20Edition.pdf (the article is in page 4).
Andrew has been contributing to the Minibloq project in other ways. He has made a nice tutorial on how to add custom blocks to Minibloq, and posted it to the forum: http://minibloq.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=11. He also developed the first third-party custom block for Minibloq, using the XML interface (plus a bit of  Arduino C/C++ code).

As always, we really like to post interesting things made with Minibloq. If you have a project and want to share it with us, just post about it in the forum, or mention us in Twitter (@juliandasilvag). Thanks!