Is there any way at all to connect scratch to an arduino board. I would love to be able to control motors and lights.

Not Scratch 3 at the moment

But this might help you
https://playground.arduino.cc/Interfacing/Scratch

And there are many Scratch-like ways of doing it

Ardublocks
microblocks.fun

etc

SimpleScratch wrote:

Not Scratch 3 at the moment

But this might help you
https://playground.arduino.cc/Interfacing/Scratch

And there are many Scratch-like ways of doing it

Ardublocks
microblocks.fun

etc

Thank you so much mate. Just what i was looking for!

Is there any timeframe for an official Arduino extension for Scratch 3.0 to be released?

Not that I've heard about

I'm close to releasing a method of using Scratch 3 to control GPIO pins on a Pi - I should be able to adapt it to interface to Firmata running on Arduino - timescale estimate - a month

That is awesome Scratcher. Let me know and we will test it out with our Uno / sensor project we're working on.

I'm not too convinced by the notion of running Arduino Scratch-wise. Besides, the offerings mentioned above don't seem to keep up with new versions. Scratch users might want to graduate to other things. Perhaps different environments should be kept separate.

The Processing environment communicates with Arduino using serial communication via a usb-to-serial interface. Basically, each side sends and receives series of bytes which have to be interpreted by software. Presumably, the wired link can be replaced by Bluetooth, but I have no experience with that. I propose that Scratch should implement a similar interface.

One way of doing that would be to do the communications via the music MIDI protocol. This is serial under another name but with extensive existing software facilities. An advantage is that Scratch would be connectable to any device that generates sounds. Hardware MIDI interfaces that provide an electronic interface are cheap enough. There exist ways of routing MIDI data between applications, and hairless-midiserial can be used to connect these to Arduino.

Another read/write way of communicating could be via whatever Terminal application is being used for Arduino. However, the software link would be dependent on the OS, and I don't want to say anything that might hinder the implementation of a desktop version of Scratch.

I'm not too convinced by the notion of running Arduino Scratch-wise

Well - every single version of Scratch has had an interface to Arduino - I've even written a Scratch 1.4 one myself in the old days

One way of doing that would be to do the communications via the music MIDI protocol.

I think you are arriving late to the party

IIRC Arduino Firrmata (the no 1 way of communicating to and Arduino from Scratch type languages) is a based on MIDI protocol


Found my old page http://simplesi.net/scratch-arduino/

@Mr_Robot_Grover
If you can get this existing project working with Scratch 2 offline editor - I have a simple modification in the works to make it interface to Scratch 3

https://github.com/MrYsLab/s2a_fm]https://github.com/MrYsLab/s2a_fm]https://github.com/MrYsLab/s2a_fm

Documentation here
https://github.com/MrYsLab/s2a_fm/blob/master/documentation/s2a_fm_reference.pdf

Yes you can. You can write an extension for Scratch 3 that runs in the Chrome-Browser and uses WebUSB to access the Arduino.

I've done exactly this with the ftDuino (which is a Arduino for fischertechnik) and Scratch3. Bonus: This works on Windows, MacOS und Linux and also with most Android-Smartphones and tablets. You only need to matching cable to connect the Arduino to your phone or tablet,

Have you got a link to the code for your extension?

Sure. But cannot post links yet.

It's all here:

https://github.com/harbaum/scratch-vm/tree/develop/src/extensions/scratch3_ftduino

I tried incorporating you mod into my fork but failed so going to start again with a straight-forward clone of your fork and see what happens.

What OS did you get it working on? (I'm on Win10)

I've tested it with Win10, Linux and Android.

If you just want to see it running go to
https://harbaum.github.io/ftduino/webusb/scratch3/

More info about the device used at http://ftduino.de

Your site works lovely

How do you know? Do you have an ftDuino?

No I don't have an ftduino - I meant the extension loads - unlike when I tried it out myself on my fork

Hi, was checking back on progress and looks like a lot going on! I have been a long time fischertechnik fan - ftduino looks awesome. SimpleScratch - thanks for the suggestions and links. I will see if we can get it to work and report back!

Mr_Robot_Grover wrote:

I have been a long time fischertechnik fan - ftduino looks awesome.

Although it's a hobbyist project it's being produced professionally and is available for sale. Feel free to combine your childhood memories with scratch :-)