Scratch

Believe me I LUV scratch. I've been with it from the beggining, its not too difficult, and it has great potential. Read that again. 'it has great potential'. Mhm correct. Picoboard is nice, but the limited buttons and and small veriety of sensors, it could be greatly improved.

Now believe me, I have a sensor board. It's nice, but theres many things I want to do with outside sensors, without hacking into scratch and getting third-party software/robots/materials. So heres my ideas.

NOTE: Now obviously if I could I'd buy tons of stuff, but believe me even I can only afford certain stuff. But considering I see other WeDo stuff and Mindstorms at such high prices, I find this a bit required.

Scratch Kit and Accesories
The first main set, which you will most likely buy at first, is the Scratch Kit. This will be something for something like, well I don't know. If the Lego WeDo Kit is around $125 or $135, then it can be around $300 (U.S.), or up to that. Quite a bit, but any dedicated scratch user might buy it    It will have the following parts:

-Medium Scratch Board
-10 tiny buttons
-10 half buttons
-8 medium buttons
-1 light sensor
-1 color sensor
-1 sound sensor
-2 medium sliders
-4 aligator clips (the wires)
-4 aligator clip slots (the piece that goes into the hole)
-CD with Scratch Installer, examples on how to use it, and sample projects.

The next things you can buy are the boards. There are a couple of sizes.

-Big Scratch Board-These will be the size of a piece of paper-Maybe $40
-Medium Scratch Board-These will be 3/4 the size of a Big Scratch Board-Maybe $25-$30
-Small Rectngle Scratch Board-These will be a little bigger than a Pico Board-Maybe $15
-Small Circular/Oval Scratch Board- These will be more circle and curvish.

Now for certain things you have in mind, due to popular demand, there will be certain 'frames' for the boards, for maybe racing wheels. That would be cool. Also possibly a game controller. Although the frames will most likely be for the small ractangle and circular/oval boards. They will be pretty cheap, as they will technically do nothing.

Also required is buttons. There will be multiple button sets available seperately. In addition you will be able to chose a custom amount of buttons if you want.

-Mixed buttons- Contains 10 tiny buttons, 8 half buttons, and 6 medium buttons-about $10-$15
-Tiny button set-Contains 15 tiny buttons-about $5-$8
-Half button set-Contants 15 half buttons-about $6-$9
-Medium button set-Contains 10 medium buttons-about $10-$12

Next are light, color, and sound sensors. These are a bit complicated so they're not as cheap. A light sensor may be $3, a color is $5, and a sound sensor is $3 or $4.

In addition, there are the sliders.

Small slider/true or false switch-$2
Medium slider-$3
Large slider-$4 or $5

Lastly, there are the aligator clips. Although I'd imagine 4 is enough for the main set...I guess its fine that some people want more.

4 aligator clips and slots-Maybe $10 or $12

What it will be/Components

The Boards - This will be a bit larger than the scratch board I'll say. Maybe the size of....maybe a 3/4 or 4/5 the size of a piece of regular paper. Possibly it can come in multiple sizes. One thing I have to say is that it should be able to be wireless if wanted. This would be great for making game controllers and such. Now the question is, which gadgets and buttons and such will it have? Well it will be customizable. That means everywhere there will be tiny holes, maybe 2 cm distance apart, and the buttons would attach and such to them.  The buttons will have 1 (for tiny buttons), 2 (perhaps for eye sensor), 4, or more for bigger ones each, and they can move for a good feel and for customization. So it will be just as thick as the scratch board, I guess a bit thicker if needed actually. And it will probably use just 1 side of the board. I'm not sure.

The Buttons - These will be the basic buttons that will be usable. They will come in a couple sizes:
1 hole - Tiny, but handy. Come in Square and Circle
2 holes - Good for half buttons, which can be used in different situations, as buttons that don't take up sapce but aren't tiny. Come in Rectangle and Oval/Elipse
4 holes - The normal kind. Come in Square and Circle.

Light Sensor - This will be a 2 or 1 hole sensor that will sence the amount of light present. Pretty simple.

Color Sensor - This will be a 2 or 1 hole sensor that will sence colors. Withing Scratch, there will be blocks that have conditions for the hue, and value of the color (location on color wheel, and how dark/light it is) that way you can sense for certain things.

Sound Sensor - This wil l again be a 2 or 1 hold sensor that will able to sence different things. First it will be able to sence how loud the curent sounds are. Next it will be able to tell the average pitch of the sound(s).  And probably other stuff too.

Sliders - This was definatley a great idea for the scratch board. I remember when I went to Scratch Day at MIT, jay had his presentation, of using the scratch board, specifically the slider and sound, and a marker, he make a trumpet that was really cool. So this is planned to be just like the current slider generally. But it will come in a couple sizes.

Tiny Slider - This will be practically like a true or false switch. Is 2 holes.
Medium Slider - This will be the size of the current one, about 5 holes.
Big Slider - This will be about double the size of the current slider, maybe a little less... about 8-10 holes.

Gyro-Sensor This will be build into all of the boards. This is so it wil just be like a wii remote, and it can sence where it is tilted and such, in all 3 ways, x, y, and z. I actually recently saw this as a youtube video, a young boy used the tild sensor in the WeDo kit to make a board, and you had to tilt the ball, to get it from the beginning to the finish. So that would be possible, and also this would help so it would work as a steering wheel and more.

Aligator Clips!!!! Just like the scratch board, there will be the aligator clips. There will be the 1 hole clips that go on, which you attach the aligator clip to to do something. Although when I first saw the pico board I assumed it had little use, it actually does as I saw in some examples, which makes this userful.

As you can see there would be lots more options, and more customability, so I think this would be great. Obviously this would still take a bit of investment to make but...I'd think its worth it 

Also If you have ideas for more features, just post one and I might add it!

Last edited by Lucario621 (2009-10-10 19:19:13)