Blocklets, B-Squares, Minibloq, Arduino / DuinoBot and iPad == Kick-Ass Roboting

Lately I encountered some really cool projects on Kickstarter which are cool by themselves but together they could really make robotics a cool and fun activity. These are the projects I like and also back:

• Blocklets: A cool, lego-like building system with a lot of potential
• Minibloq: An open-source project to create a cool GUI to program and control robotic devices
• B-Squares: Solar-powered squares to produce, store and use the electricity

Now these projects are all pretty cool but together they could create a kick-ass environment for robotics especially in schools. Now if it would be possible to convert Minibloq to the iPad I can image that this would make it dead easy to program robots. Doing that might not be easy but I think this is worth while. If Minibloq can be made to work as easy as Garageband on the iPad then it could be fun, educational and easy to deal with robots and devices like Arduino. Using Blocklets to create structures and vehicles and B-Squares to power them would make it possible to create bigger and more complex robots.

A few years ago I bought a Lego Mindstorm box and even though it was fun for a while it is too complicated to program, does not work with a Mac and is limited to the sensors it supports. Even though I like Legos a lot I am not going to buy a new set of Mindstrorm and I don’t think that the user interface is good, fast or easy.

Right now I am trying to see if it would be possible or even feasible to port Minibloq over to the iPad. Then I would need to check if it is possible to connect an Arduino board to an iPad (I think it might work using an USB to 30-pin connector). After that I want to write a little test program that would access an Arduino board from an iPad to get a feeling how that might work before starting to code the iPad App.

Cheers – Andy