I’m considering getting an Arduino, but I’m mostly a hardware person. Honestly, the fact that I might waste my money by never being able to do anything with it is discouraging. I may learn the coding one day, but I’d like to know if there is some program that essentially lets you build the project using virtual hardware pieces and output it as code. So if there’s a motor on the screen and I tell it to turn, then it gives me the code for it to turn. Anybody ever use the LEGO MINDSTORMS? I’m essentially looking for a code writer that functions like the one that product came with. I’ve searched all over but I admit that I am probably searching wrong. Does Arduino or any of the other devices like it have a program that functions this way?
Unfortunately there’s not one. But I can say that there are so many examples on the web that it wouldn’t take much to your project up and running with little to no experience with programming. That’s what Arduinos are all about.
You could try out Modkit http://www.modk.it/, it’s the closest thing I can think of to Mindstorms. It is very much a teaching tool, however, and lacks some advanced features.
If you switch to the picAxe, they have a flowchart programming language called Logicator:
http://www.picaxe.com/Software/PICAXE/L … or-PICAXE/
Plus, they have an active, helpful discussion board.
You should definitely try Mind+ which is a flow-based visual programming software. There are tons of pre-designed blocks available in consistence of hardware components. It is free and open source. Try it out dude:)
sph12:
I’m considering getting an Arduino, but I’m mostly a hardware person. Honestly, the fact that I might waste my money by never being able to do anything with it is discouraging. I may learn the coding one day, but I’d like to know if there is some program that essentially lets you build the project using virtual hardware pieces and output it as code. So if there’s a motor on the screen and I tell it to turn, then it gives me the code for it to turn. Anybody ever use the LEGO MINDSTORMS? I’m essentially looking for a code writer that functions like the one that product came with. I’ve searched all over but I admit that I am probably searching wrong. Does Arduino or any of the other devices like it have a program that functions this way?
Some are semi-close, for big-iron like Raspberry Pi and it’s graphical programming for young folks.
If you’re into microprocessors and so on, ya just gotta learn. If you move up to a Linux micro like RPi or equiv. then you get to use Python and other languages that are arguably easier than Arduino’s C/C++. THere are more and more community college or Maker classes to help you learn C/C++ or other.