Tag Archives: software

Products, Programming Method, Software, STEM Education

“Visual Development” system for Arduino

1 Comment

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!

screenshot-03

App Inventor News, STEM Education

MIT App Inventor usage triples during 2014-2015 school year

1 Comment

Source: MIT App Inventor usage for 2014-2015 Academic Year

As they point out, the cyclical ups and downs in usage suggest App Inventor is primarily used by students – with drop off in usage during school vacation periods.

That suggests an opportunity to expand usage of MIT App Inventor – by insuring that AI2 appeals to a wide audience of potential app developers and not just educational programs!

General

Subscribe to AppInventor.Pevest.com by email

I have added a new “Subscribe by email” feature to provide another way to be alerted to new posts on this web site.

Look for “SUBSCRIBE TO POSTS BY EMAIL” in the right column of this page, then enter your name and email address and click on Subscribe.

Check your email for a confirmation message and click on the link in the email to confirm your subscription. If you do not receive a confirmation email within a few minutes, check your Spam mail folder – and then check to make sure you entered your email address correctly!

I have only tested this feature with my own email address but hopefully it will work well for anyone who wishes to receive post alerts via email!

Facebook is a simple way to be alerted to updates, but you may also wish to use Twitter, our RSS newsfeed, or the new email subscription – or all of them! My intent is to make it simple for you to receive new posts in what ever way works best for you.

Components, Programming Method

Displaying web pages in your Android apps

4 Comments

Last year, I presented a short tutorial on displaying web pages from inside your App Inventor apps. Now, here is a some what improved version that prompts for a web address URL, checks to see if http:// has been entered, and if not, prepends http:// to the front of the address. Then the web page is displayed.

The Designer View

There is not much to the user interface – a text box to enter the web URL and a button to display the web page. The page then appears below the button, and the content may be scrolled on the screen.

To create this user interface, drag a horizontal layout onto the screen and then add a label for the “Web page URL” prompt, followed by a text box for the data entry. Then add the Display web page button.

From the User Interface section of the Palette, at the left of the Designer screen, drag and drop a WebViewer component on to the design area.

Screenshot_2015-02-10-15-15-17

 

The WebViewer is not a full Internet browser – it is a component that displays the specified web page only. The WebViewer does not support standard browser features, such as saving web page content nor does it provide a history of the web pages visited.

The Blocks Code

Continue reading Displaying web pages in your Android apps →

Components, Programming Method, Tips

Part 2: Sending numeric data using App Inventor Bluetooth communications

27 Comments

Part 1 of this tutorial introduced Bluetooth communications and implemented a simple method of sending text data back and forth between two Android devices over the Bluetooth wireless link. If you are not familiar with using App Inventor’s Bluetooth component, start with Part 1.

In Part 2, a data packet concept is introduced to guide the communications between devices, and is used to send a combination of text and numeric data. This section introduces the concept of binary numbers so that you can understand why we would handle text and numbers in different ways.

This tutorial modifies the user interface of both the client and server programs introduced in Part 1. Then, blocks code is added to send text and numeric data. Numeric data is sent as binary data using special methods of the Bluetooth components.

Related:

Continue reading Part 2: Sending numeric data using App Inventor Bluetooth communications →

Tips

Blocks Editing Tip: Arranging and collapsing blocks in the editor

4 Comments

As you develop your App Inventor program using the Blocks editor, do you find your blocks overlapping and crashing in to one another on the screen? You know, like this:

AIBlockMess

You can drag the blocks on the screen so they no longer overlap, but dragging each block is tedious (time consuming). But there is an easy way to automatically re-arrange the blocks.

  • Move the mouse pointer to any part of the white space outside the blocks
  • On Windows, right-click the mouse button
  • On Mac OS X, press Ctrl and click the mouse button

Continue reading Blocks Editing Tip: Arranging and collapsing blocks in the editor →