Physical Etoys
Description
Physical Etoys is a visual programming tool that connects the virtual world of computers with the real world in which we live in. With Physical Etoys you can easily program real world objects (such as robots) to perform interesting tasks, or you can sense the world and use that information to control virtual objects (such as drawings on the screen).
Everything is just as easy as grabbing some tiles representing instructions and assembling a script. No need for programming skills, just use the mouse and explore the system and its possibilities!
Physical Etoys is actually an “extension” to Etoys: a media-rich authoring environment and visual programming system made by the very same people who created Smalltalk. We believe Etoys is a wonderful software that helps children explore their own creativity in fun and educational ways, so we wanted to give Etoys the possibility to interact with real world objects such as robotic kits and innovative joysticks. Feel free to learn more about Etoys, it’s open, it’s free, and it’s really fun!
Download
Unfortunately this version only works in Windows, if you’re a Linux user you should wait for the next release. We are currently working to surpass this limitation.
Supported hardware
- Arduino, an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple microcontroller board.
- Nintendo Wiimote, the primary controller for Nintendo’s Wii console.
- Parallel port, a type of interface for connecting various peripherals to the computer.
- RoboSapien v2, a toy-like biomorphic robot.
- Roboquad, a 4-legged robot that somewhat resembles a spider and a dog.
- I-Sobot, the world’s smallest humanoid robot in production.
- Lego Mindstorms Nxt, a programmable robotics kit released by Lego.
Tutorials
- Arduino ( español / english ).
- Wiimote ( español / english ).
- Parallel Port ( español / english ).
- Infrared Robots ( español / english ).
- Lego Nxt ( español / english ).
Screenshots
License
This project is being developed under the MIT license. Please note that Physical Etoys may include third-party software components with a different license than MIT.
Similar projects
If you’re interested in using Etoys for robotics stuff but your hardware platform is not currently supported by Physical Etoys you might want to look at the following projects: