Scratch
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#1 2008-12-16 15:29:46
pico boards, picocrickets
Hello,
I'm thinking of getting my son (who is hopefully not reading this!) a pico board. However, I'm also extremely intrigued by the PicoCricket kit. It seems from the website that the cricket is programmed primarily using PicoBlocks.
Does that mean that Scratch will talk to the Pico board, but not to the cricket?
If the answer to the above is yes, the next thing I wonder about is how similar is PicoBlocks to Scratch? In an ideal world, I could imagine my son wanting to be able to reuse scripts from his Scratch projects in a sensor based environment (with having to recode them).
Thanks!
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#2 2008-12-16 15:53:45
- chalkmarrow
- Scratcher
- Registered: 2007-05-18
- Posts: 100+
Re: pico boards, picocrickets
I would defer to the Scratch team on this, but I do not believe that the current version of Scratch can talk directly to PicoCricket components. Also, note that the Picoboard is input only (there are no outputs for controlling motors, etc.). The software for the PicoCricket is similar to Scratch, in that you snap together "bricks" of software to make your control program.
My private hope is that some day they get the Lego WeDo system to interface directly with Scratch, but that may be a long way off 
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#3 2008-12-17 07:08:37
Re: pico boards, picocrickets
Currently, they can't speak with one another. I hope they do in the future!! I'm not sure if that's in the cards or not.
The 2 softwares are very similar in their language. With the PicoBoard, their inputs are virtually the same, however, their output differs quite a bit. Learning one will certainly helping with using the other.
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#4 2008-12-17 07:39:07
Re: pico boards, picocrickets
@terekita,
Lutz is correct. The Picoboard is specifically designed to work with Scratch. The Pico Blocks sofware is the programming environment for the Crickets. The two programs differ in function along a few dimensions. Feel free to download Pico Blocks from the picocricket.com website. That way, you can get a feel for the similar script-building style. (Downloading the software is free.)
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