If you're an oldbie (5 year party for me! ), you probably recall Mesh. This was something that allowed Scratch Projects to (somewhat) connect to the internet.

Whatever happened to this feature?

Cloud variables make it obsolete.

Once they are added, that is.

majormax wrote:

Cloud variables make it obsolete.

Once they are added, that is.

Ah, I was curious about it, since it was never really explained by the ST. (If it has, I'd like to see it)

I would argue that Mesh is still relevant, especially when there is an offline version of Scratch 2.0 - you might be on a local network with no internet access but still want to share via Mesh.

Mesh covers sharing two things over a network - variables and broadcasts. I guess you can have a cloud variable and look for its value changing but that feels clumsier than a broadcast where it is obvious in the code that you're triggering an action.

I'm also not clear that cloud variables would allow several independent groups to be running a program at the same time - so for example, if you had a poker playing project you might want to limit a table to 6 players but you might have multiple tables. In Mesh terms a table could be a separate mesh which makes it relatively easy to handle. This is just an example to explain what I mean. There are always ways to work round it but as BoltBait has suggested elsewhere this might result in much more data being passed around than is actually required, slowing things down.

Anyone care to comment?

deck26 wrote:

Anyone care to comment?

I think cloud variables are still the best solution, but you're right that it would be nice to have RPCs (instance online list!). I'm just not sure what the interface for them would be.

EDIT: You'd also want to be able to identify who sent the broadcast on the receiving end.

The underlying Mesh stuff is actually just Remote Sensor Connection/the RSC protocol which has been implemented in Scratch 1.3 for use with a ScratchBoard. Mesh just adds the feature to directly connect with a project that has RSC enabled.

majormax wrote:

Cloud variables make it obsolete.

Once they are added, that is.

Not really, the ScratchBoard uses RSC (the communication protocol between Scratch and the ScratchBoard) and I doubt the Scratch Team will drop the ScratchBoard sub-project, or at least supporting it. And if they keep RSC, I'm sure we can convince them to add a direct connection feature/block so it'll have the same capabilities as Mesh.

Magnie wrote:

The underlying Mesh stuff is actually just Remote Sensor Connection/the RSC protocol which has been implemented in Scratch 1.3 for use with a ScratchBoard. Mesh just adds the feature to directly connect with a project that has RSC enabled.

I've gotten into 1.4's “inner workings” as I like to call them, and have enabled Mesh quite a few times. Your explanation doesn't account for the fact that when you click the button to start using Mesh, it asks for an IP address to connect to.

ElectricSparx wrote:

Magnie wrote:

The underlying Mesh stuff is actually just Remote Sensor Connection/the RSC protocol which has been implemented in Scratch 1.3 for use with a ScratchBoard. Mesh just adds the feature to directly connect with a project that has RSC enabled.

I've gotten into 1.4's “inner workings” as I like to call them, and have enabled Mesh quite a few times. Your explanation doesn't account for the fact that when you click the button to start using Mesh, it asks for an IP address to connect to.

Yes it does; that's how it identifies the machine so it can "directly connect with a project [on that machine] that has RSC enabled."

good idea

sathvikrias wrote:

good idea

please be constructive when you post.