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XOD

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Duce robot
(@duce-robot)
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Joined: 5 years ago
Posts: 672
Topic starter  

What ever happened to zod programming environment ? It seemed to be a break out start but then it faded away.


   
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Robo Pi
(@robo-pi)
Robotics Engineer
Joined: 5 years ago
Posts: 1669
 

I keep getting emails from them so they must still be alive.  I think they are having competition from Ardublockly.   Ardublockly appears to have the strategy of getting elementary school teachers to introduce their students to programming using Ardublockly.  So that might be an advantage for them in the graphical programming wars.

Ardublockly is also laid out more like actual programming so it would be easy to move from Ardublockly to using actual code languages.  I think the style of XOD doesn't serve as a good introduction to actually learning programming.

Another advantage of using Ardublockly is that there also exists plain old Blockly for programming in many other languages using the jigsaw puzzle pieces.   So Ardublockly is more versatile in that area too.  I'm not sure if XOD works for anything other than Arduino?  I've have to look into that.

Between the two I tend to like Ardublockly better.  It's simply more fun to use. ?   I think it also makes more sense since it flows like normal programming code.   With XOD you end up with connections going all over the place like an old telephone switchboard.  Not nearly as intuitive as the Ardublockly jigsaw pieces.

There's also the sensual ecstasy when the jigsaw pieces "click" into place.   This tells you that you've done it correctly.   So it's very satisfying to hear those clicks.   I'm not sure, but I think Ardublockly is also more foolproof than XOD.

Ardublockly will certainly appeal to very young children over XOD to be sure.  Even XOD would seem far more complicated to them.

DroneBot Workshop Robotics Engineer
James


   
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Duce robot
(@duce-robot)
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Posts: 672
Topic starter  

Xod did seem complicated . like ros plenty of tutorials on how to install it but not much direction on how to use it .??


   
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robotBuilder
(@robotbuilder)
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Posts: 2037
 

Ardublockly looks like Scratch which was designed for children.
As an old programmer from way back that kind of visual programming doesn't appeal to me at all!

I downloaded the XOD ide and tried a simple LED example. It worked fine. However when I looked at the source code I couldn't understand it at all.

XOD doesn't actually wire up the hardware so you have to know how to do that first and you still have to type stuff in like the pin number or some value in the properties box.

Like all things I guess it takes practice, practice and practice. Go through all the XOD tutorials you have hardware for until it becomes second nature.

Apart from Bill's XOD tutorials there are others such as:

 


   
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Duce robot
(@duce-robot)
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Joined: 5 years ago
Posts: 672
Topic starter  

Yes it does take some getting used to .but it is interesting with the nodes.


   
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