Volume 2 of the App Inventor 2 Tutorial will be available at Amazon and Google Play/Google books within a few days. Just waiting for the new title to clear through their review process.
Category Archives: Products
“Visual Development” system for Arduino
As you know, MIT App Inventor is a graphical-based programming system, or a “visual development” system where programs are constructed by dragging and dropping “blocks” onto a Blocks editor.
Arduino, which we mentioned in conjunction with our Bluetooth interface code, is a microcontroller system that is normally programmed in a language similar to the C++ programming language – which is text-based.
Mitov Softwware has introduced a new visual programming system for Arduino. I have not yet had a chance to try this out – the software is in “Beta” test phase and is not yet generally available.
The simplicity of an App Inventor type programming environment might then be available for Arduino applications. This is very exciting. It may be helpful for enabling more kinds of people, with different types of backgrounds than software developers(!) to write code for Arduino boards.
Program Arduino boards visually, fast and easy with Visuino #Visuino #Arduino
Source: Visuino – Visual Development for Arduino by Mitov Software
I have used this screen shot from their web site to illustrate the general idea – really looking forward to trying this out!
Inexpensive Android tablet and smart phone available
Chances are, if you are writing App Inventor apps for Android, you already have an Android smart phone or tablet. If not, Amazon has slashed prices on their Amazon Fire Phone, 32GB (Unlocked GSM) and their Amazon Fire HD 7 tablet (but do see NOTE below!):
NOTE – the Fire HD runs Android but its not a fully open Android tablet. However, there are some work arounds; more info on that here. Here is a CNet web page that shows specifically how to load other apps – there are some limitations so read the whole link. I do not own this tablet and have not tested it with App Inventor. Appears to be the same issue with the Fire Phone – Amazon restricts it but its just a matter of setting some options in Settings to open it up. Would be interesting to hear from others if they have App Inventor apps running on this tablet or phone. Seems like they should work!
Another excellent tablet option is the ASUS Google Nexus 7 Android Tablet (16gb)
Continue reading Inexpensive Android tablet and smart phone available