EBlock Save

eBlock 6.0

A Scratch-based application with which you can program a wide variety of devices (Arduino, STM32, SAMD51, ESP32, NRF5 ... and more ...)

You can use all devices in Online mode ( also BBC micro:bit !)

Table of contents

• Why eBlock
• Status
• New Features
• Comming Features
• Devices
• Extensions
• Download
• Contribute

Why eBlock

eBlock is a fork of the popular open source application mBlock 3.4.5 (a formidable work from Makeblock .Co, Ltd. company) but Makeblock is no longer maintaining and supporting that version and the newest versions of mBlock are no longer open source

Our team has built eBlock with the aim to continue supporting it and adding a lot of new interesting features.

And thinking of many users :

• That still prefer version of scratch due to simplicity.
• Those who prefer to continue programming in c/c ++ instead of Python

Status

eBlock is now a stable release, anyway there is a list of pending features to add that we are activelly coding.

We are finishing documentation and a wide variety of sample programs showing the new features, so please be patient ;)

New Features

New UI design and more confortable colors

A modern look and feel, and new block colors to understand better the code

Categorized extension blocks

You can place your extension blocks to the corresponding category

String Variables

Use string variables and eBlock will detect and convert it to its corresponding source code

List ( Arrays )

You can work with lists and eBlock will convert them to source too. It opens a new world on programming more complex robot actions. Lists items can be numbers or Strings

RTTTL tones

RTTTL is a melody format developed by Nokia some years ago. It allows to transfer songs in a easy way.

RTTTL on wikipedia

You can play a song in background while your robot is moving or doing any action.

Or you can wait for rtttl tone to end

And you can make interactive leds using the current playing frequency level

New matrix editor and Block

Now matrix editor allow to use a 5x5 matrix ( for example to use with BBC micro:bit )

and a new matrix block that shows you better the matrix thumbnail

Source code viewer and editor

New dark theme, and bigger to review your code easilly.

Now you can edit the generated C/C++ code before uploading it to your device. It allows beginners to remove the fear of writing in source code

New console

The output console has moved it's possition, access it only if you want

Event driven code

Now you can code easily using device events, instead in putting all your code inside main loop.

Export your blocks as image

Export your code blocks as image PNG to easy share with others, make documentation or upload to your web

Portable

Removed user tracking code

We have removed all user tracking code because mBlock tracks almost every user action and sends it to Google Analitycs. eBlock uses only one remote call at startup to check for new version. And never sends any parameter or user data.

Small download size

The size of eBlock is < 30MB

Multiple devices

Not only Arduino based boards now you can code micro:bit, SAMD51, NRF5, STM32, ESP8266, ESP32 ...

Full device customization

Each device can have one or more firmware to flash, it's own drivers to install or custom code templates to translate blocks

New Scratch native blocks

• map: Maps a value between 2 source low and high value to a dest low and high value

Devices

You can program a wide variety of devices with eBlock, and if you want to use eBlock with your own robot, you can customize the list of devices to show only the device/s you want.

Please can contribute to add more devices to the list, you can view current avaliable devices in the next repo:

https://github.com/distintiva/eBlock-devices#readme

Extensions

eBlock has a new extension system and is backward compatble with existing mBlock extensions, tha you can download from:

https://www.mblock.cc/extensions/

How to add extensions

You can download and existing extension from the above link ad unzip it under eBlock/resources/extensions direcotry

Now you can place synchronous calls inside a JavaScript extension functions. For example get a value from your device and make some calculations before submitin to Scratch

ext.getJoystick = function(nextID, coord){
    
    if(coord=="x"){
      ret = device.get_analog_perc(0);
    }else{
      ret = device.get_analog_perc(1);
    } 
    
    responseValue(ret-48);
  };

Download

Portable version, no installer, only unzip and exec eBlock.exe Download the latest eBlock version from:

eBlock-windows (27Mb)

Comming Features

• 64bit MacOS version
• Linux version
• New extensions
• Add more devices and extensions

References

• mBloc 3.4.5 source as a base for eBlock
• Arduino List Library - by Luis Llamas ( @luisllamas )
• RTTTL NonBlocking lib - forked from https://github.com/end2endzone/NonBlockingRTTT
• Distintiva micro:bit lib - use micro:bit with arduino compiler

Contribute

If you want to contribute adding more devices, extensions, help to port to Linux or Mac ... you can contact us at [email protected]