Robots and Physical Computing

In a recent post ( First play with a SPOKE capacitive touch MIDI board ), I shared some first impressions of getting the SPOKE board connected, trying the web-based examples, and using it as drums in GarageBand. At the end of that post, I mentioned that the next thing I wanted to try was looking at the coding side of things., image taken from https://www.spokeboard.com/ Because the SPOKE board acts as a MIDI controller, my mind immediately went back to Sonic Pi . As I mentioned in an earlier post ( Spooky Hot-Cross Buns - Sonic Pi ), I have no musical ability at all, but I really enjoy creating with Sonic Pi—it is free, fun, and a brilliant bit of software. Putting the two together seemed like an obvious next step. For this experiment, I connected the SPOKE board as before, but instead of using an installed desktop app, I ran the web version of Sonic Pi ( https://sonic-pi.net/code.html ) straight in Chrome with no special set-up. This is a really useful option when you are working on a...

In previous post I looked at a few on-line robot simulators (see links below) Programming VEX Code Programming  iRobot Simulator Programming Lego EV3 simulator A recent addition to these is the Edbot Studio Virtual Playground https://studio.ed.bot/;   a preview of simulation technology for  Robots in Schools Ltd  Edbot robots.  Two Edbot robots are shown in a gym; you can select actions for the robots to carry out, including Gangam-style dancing and Head Stands. This is really a preview of the tech, rather than a programming option - at the moment . Robots in Schools Ltd, who make the Edbots, say the Virtual Playground will be part of their Edbot Studio a browser-based Environment to allow both coding in Scratch, Python and JavaScript, of both virtual and real robots. I am really curious to see the full Edbot Studio in action when it is released, but for the moment getting virtual robots to dance and kick is still really good fun. The physical robots -EdBot are...