Ricardo Moran wrote:
Hi everybody (and sorry if you receive multiple copies),
I would like to announce a new version of Physical Etoys, now with a lot of
new features:
1. First of all, it's based on Etoys 5.0 so it incorporates all the
bug-fixes and new features from the Etoys release.
2. We are now focusing on the two main hardware platforms: Arduino and
Lego Mindstorms Nxt. For the rest, we will publish a set of "external
modules" that you can install in your Physical Etoys version.
3. Also, we now support an argentinian version of Arduino, which is
called DuinoBot and it's currently being used in a lot of argentinian
schools.
4. We added new devices for arduino and now we also support the use of
digital devices attached to analog pins.
5. We added two new objects that let you graph the input of a variable
across time and save it to a csv file.
6. We added a new programming mode that lets you compile your scripts
and have them running inside the robot, in contrast to running them in the
computer and communicate with the robot via bluetooth or usb. We believe
this opens a lot of new posibilities for the Physical Etoys users.
7. And finally, we fixed a lot of bugs that make the software a lot more
stable (or so we hope :).
I would like to use this opportunity to publicly thank all the people from
the Etoys community for their work on Etoys 5, this latest version is much
better than the last and I encourage you all to try it.
And also, I would like to announce that Physical Etoys 2.0 is going to be
installed by default on all the laptops of the "Conectar igualdad" program,
which is kind of like the argentinian version of OLPC (but for older
students). So we are *really* excited about this!
Now that you're all as excited as we are :) you can download and try
Physical Etoys 2.0 from our blog:
http://tecnodacta.com.ar/gira/projects/physical-etoys/.
Cheers,
Richo
Interfacing with Arduino is very cool. It is high on my list of things
to play with (as time permits)
Now in case you ever need anything more industrial/powerful (but more
costly) here are a couple of things I have been kept a wishful eye on
for a couple of years (but I have not yet had time to play with). I
share this on the random chance someone gets interested in it before I
get a chance to play - hopefully early next year.
http://www.embeddedarm.com/products/board-detail.php?product=TS-7350
200MHz ARM9 CPU; 32MB SDRAM (64-128MB opt)
8MB RAM Framebuffer; able to drive TFT-LCDs via custom FPGA
5K LUT FPGA <----------------
Boots Linux 2.6 in about 1 second <----------------
1 10/100 ethernet port, 2 USB 2.0 (12Mbit/s max), 1 SD Card slot
$129
http://www.embeddedarm.com/products/board-detail.php?product=TS-7550
250MHz ARM9 CPU; 64MB DDR-RAM; 256MB SLC XNAND Drive
Customizable 5K LUT OpenCore FPGA <----------------
1 10/100 Ethernet, 33 DIO, SPI and I2C interfaces, 8 TTL UART, 1 CAN bus
$89
http://www.embeddedarm.com/about/resource.php?item=628
http://www.embeddedarm.com/documentation/articles/reliability.pdf
http://www.embeddedarm.com/products/pc104-peripherals.php
cheers -ben
