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Blokdots – Build interactive hardware prototypes visually
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- thomasfromcdnjs 6y agoAhh this looks rather brilliant at first glance. (if only as an educational tool)
- curryst 6y agoI actually think it could also be rather useful for some IoT things. Things where all you want is a relatively basic connection between two electrical components. I carry a stock of ESP32's at home for stuff that falls into a domain where this might be useful, especially if this has the ability to convert a given signal into a stream of MQTT messages. This seems marginally easier than firing up a new esp-idf project (although that's possibly because I haven't built up the muscle memory to have the right GPIO incarnations stored). The code export is probably the killer feature here, so when you get to the point where working in the GUI is limiting, you can export it and switch to editing source code. I don't have a Mac handy, I'm curious what the export looks like. Is every card a different file? Is there an event loop that "listens" for these events? Or does it just generate a big main function?
- olivierbrcknr 6y agoWhen exporting the code, every card is built into an own function, all in one file. The eventListeners are created on board setup. It is using the johnny-five API → http://johnny-five.io/api/ http://johnny-five.io/api/ You can see the basic structure of the generated code here: https://blokdots.com/documentation#Code-Export https://blokdots.com/documentation#Code-Export
- olivierbrcknr 6y agoHey! Super glad to be featured on Hacker News! Olivier here, one of the founders of blokdots. Let me know if you have some questions.
- rewq4321 6y agoHey Oliver, looks interesting! Any reason it's not available as a web app? It looks like it's HTML/JS anyway? At least going off your alpha code on github. That would be helpful for students who often aren't able to install software on school computers, people who have chromebooks, or people like me who don't like running native apps unless they're sandboxed somehow. In any case, I hope you're successful here - very exciting project!
- olivierbrcknr 6y agoHey! Thanks a lot for the appreciation! Yes, as we need access to the serial port to connect with the Arduino, we currently need to rely on a native app, the browser does not allow us to do so at the moment. If this would be the case in the future, we would consider this of course as well.
- VoidWhisperer 6y agoDoesn't the Arduino web IDE access the serial ports? I'm possibly missing something here but why not do it how they do it?
- olivierbrcknr 6y agoArduino requires you to install a software to bridge this serial port issue.
- onion2k 6y agoThere's an on-going origin trial of the web serial API - https://web.dev/serial/ https://web.dev/serial/ - if you can get a token you could probably run the code in a browser (specifically Chrome at the moment).
- olivierbrcknr 6y agoThank you for the tip! We will have a look at it!
- amitport 6y agoOff topic. Anyone knows if the website template is available (for sale or otherwise)?
- olivierbrcknr 6y agoSorry, we designed and coded it ourselves
- amitport 6y agoNice work :)
- olivierbrcknr 6y ago<3
- Gabriel_Martin 6y agoIt really is quite nice aesthetically and functionally. If you're on the market for a great web experience, I'd love to offer help. Feel free to reach out to my gmail, via Gabrielmtn.
- zepto 6y agoThis is beautifully designed software, and a really cool concept. However, it just doesn’t ring true to say this is building prototypes without code. “If Button is pressed times, then LED should switch on” is code! This is essentially a graphical scripting language, in the vein of something like ‘scratch’ but with much nicer visuals.
- kyberias 6y agoYou should not get the downvotes. You are absolutely right.
- olivierbrcknr 6y agoThank you for the appreciation! Yes you are right, yet for the non-coder target group it seems less scary like that ;) I always thought that 'scratch' gets rather complex rather quickly and hence that the IFTTT approach might be easier to understand for someone who is not familiar to programming in general.
- zepto 6y agoAgreed - I wouldn’t say scratch is particularly similar, especially when I consider your visual analogies feature. It’s just another example of something that is really just a different form of code.
- dang 6y agoOk, we've replaced "without code" with "visually" in the title above.
- dector 6y agoDo you have plans to support non-MacOS platforms in the future?
- olivierbrcknr 6y agoWe intend to, but as we are working on this project on the side, there is no real timeline yet, sorry
- dector 6y agoGood luck with the project anyway.
- jonshariat 6y agoWow with Figma support to boot! This is amazing, I wish I knew how to get into this stuff. Is there a good starter pack/tutorial?
- olivierbrcknr 6y agoTo get started, right now we recommend https://www.seeedstudio.com/Grove-Beginner-Kit-for-Arduino-p-4549.html https://www.seeedstudio.com/Grove-Beginner-Kit-for-Arduino-p... (not all the components are supported by blokdots yet, but we are working on that).
- talkinghead 6y agowow team massively well done this looks amazing. today has been busy but i've been checking out the site and i can't wait to fire up a board and get started. will report back. site looks slick and product looks absolutely brilliant
- olivierbrcknr 6y agoThank you! Looking forward to hearing about your experiences!