Scratch

15 June 2016

START
SCRATCHX

SCRATCH is the most popular educational programming environment to start learning coding. It`s simple graphical interface, visual programming concepts and rich multimedia make it fun and engaging tool to make simple games, animations and experiments.

For LOFI Robot we use Scratch as the main programming interface for beginners. In detail we use SCRATCHX which is a special version of Scratch that allows usage of external extensions such as ARDUINO communication.

Advantages of ScratchX:
1. It is web based – works in your web browser, you do not need to install it on your computer and worry about future updates, you still need to install some plugins to make it work.
2. It uses official Scratch Extension Browser Plugin which geives decent performance and connetion with Arduino board

Disadvantages of ScratchX:
1. No wireless connection – only USB cable, no bluetooth by now

Hardware requirements:

ScratchX is compatible with such web browsers as:
1. Mozilla Firefox – RECOMENDED
2. Opera
3. Safari

WARNING – Chrome web browser stopped supporting SCRATCH EXTENSION BROWSER PLUGIN (as it dropped NPAPI pligins support) even though it is listed on Scratch website as compatible.

ScratchX configuration

1. Instal appropriate version of SCRATCH EXTENSION BROWSER PLUGIN
2. If ScratchX editor does not load in your browser check if you have latest FLASH PLAYERA installed

LOFI BRAIN controller configuration

To make LOFI Brain controller (or any other Arduino) communicate with ScratchX you have to upload specific sketch to the board, with a protocol called FIRMATA

You can find our version of FIRMATA below. It can be uploaded directly from this website by using CodeBender plugin or you can copy it and upload with Arduino IDE.