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Hey! 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 ago
Hey 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 ago
  Hey! 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 ago
    Doesn'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 ago
      Arduino requires you to install a software to bridge this serial port issue.
  - onion2k 6y ago
    There'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 ago
      Thank you for the tip! We will have a look at it!
  - learc83 6y ago
    I wrote small webserver for proxying serial port requests from the browser to solve a similar problem about 10 years ago. It's not generic enough for what you're doing, but something similar would be quick to code. https://github.com/learc83/adapter https://github.com/learc83/adapter
    - olivierbrcknr 6y ago
      Thanks for sharing!
mattlondon 6y ago
Any plans for release on Windows & Linux? Or even just as a PWA?
- olivierbrcknr 6y ago
  Yes, we are working on it for Windows at least. As we are doing this project on the side, I unfortunately am not able to tell you when the Windows version would be released. A PWA is not possible at the moment due to the missing access to the serial ports, but once this is granted, we intend it as well!
Gabriel_Martin 6y ago
This might be what gets me to pull the trigger on tinkering with hardware, between this and the JS on firmware project I saw on HN, I've definitely felt the call recently!
- olivierbrcknr 6y ago
  Go for it! It's fun!

rewq4321 6y ago

Hey 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 ago
Hey! 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 ago
  Doesn'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 ago
    Arduino requires you to install a software to bridge this serial port issue.
- onion2k 6y ago
  There'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 ago
    Thank you for the tip! We will have a look at it!
- learc83 6y ago
  I wrote small webserver for proxying serial port requests from the browser to solve a similar problem about 10 years ago. It's not generic enough for what you're doing, but something similar would be quick to code. https://github.com/learc83/adapter https://github.com/learc83/adapter
  - olivierbrcknr 6y ago
    Thanks for sharing!

mattlondon 6y ago

Any plans for release on Windows & Linux? Or even just as a PWA?

olivierbrcknr 6y ago
Yes, we are working on it for Windows at least. As we are doing this project on the side, I unfortunately am not able to tell you when the Windows version would be released. A PWA is not possible at the moment due to the missing access to the serial ports, but once this is granted, we intend it as well!

Gabriel_Martin 6y ago

This might be what gets me to pull the trigger on tinkering with hardware, between this and the JS on firmware project I saw on HN, I've definitely felt the call recently!

olivierbrcknr 6y ago
Go for it! It's fun!