Physical Computing BOF @ Snap!Con?

There has been a lot of progress in connecting Snap! to the physical world during the last year, due in part to the addition of the MicroBlocks library. (Thanks to Bernat, Jens, John Maloney, and everyone else who made this possible.)

Is there interest in a "Birds of a Feather" session on Physical Computing at Snap!Con to discuss and share new projects and developments?

I think this would be great. Using microcontrollers opens up a new world when using Snap! You can, for instance, use your body (arms, legs, head, voice, etc) to control sprites/costums/graphics/music in your Snap! project.

This sounds more like a arty, game thing to do and it is, but also people with disabilities or people who are rehabilitating could greatly benefit from this. You would have a "cheap" way of designing personal exercises.

Commercial options are always very, very expensive. In the Netherlands you could get some monetary help from the local government but it is always limited or has a lot of rules. Or sometimes nursing homes have devices but they have to be shared with hundreds of people.

I am a nurse by profession, started my "career" working with people who were mentally handicapped, so thinking about those kind of solutions is always on my mind, even while I moved on to another field in healthcare. Later on I worked with old people with dementia and very young people with dementia (sometimes only 35) and now I work with people with a substance dependency.

If I would have had MicroBlocks and Snap! in those days of my career, I would have made a lot of things that were on my mind then, but I couldn't make because I lagged the knowledge.

Just a simple idea:
You could just take an old hometrainer and attach a microcontroller with a tilt sensor to the pedals. Make a project in Snap! like Outrun (Out Run - Wikipedia) but then with bicycles.

Put some microcontrollers on a persons body so to detect when they are leaning while biking.

Setup a couple of hometrainers next to each other and you have a competition. :wink:

I will be present at Snap!Con and I hope I can do a workshop with (local) children or other interested people using microcontrollers and Snap!. I am not a seasoned Snap! user so still discovering things while I use it with microcontrollers.

@glenbull Maybe ask your questions via the Snap!Con website. There are other parties helping with organizing Snap!Con so maybe they could answer your question.

It appears that there's enough interest to make a proposal for the Physical Computing BOF worthwhile.

Are you going to be in Heidelberg @glenbull?

We are participating virtually so we won't be on site.

I could bring a lot of microcontrollers to Snap!Con so people could play with the possibilities of Snap! and MicroBlocks.

I send an email to the organizers of Snap!Con a week ago but never got a response about doing a kind of workshop (for local children). Maybe @cycomachead knows why I didn't get a response. :wink:

I could use the samples I made and showed you in another topic. I never did a workshop at Snap!Con so it is difficult for me to know what they would need. I imagine that I could just have some space where people could come and play with controllers and Snap! Or even try the MicroBlocks App Inventor extension and make their own mobile application.

@jbw3r We have attended Snap!Con for several years but our participation has been virtual. Our sense is that Snap!Con is a fairly informal collegial affair so the workshop that you have described sounds as though it would be feasible and welcome.

We plan to incorporate use of the MicroBlocks library in Snap! into a maker course that we will teach this fall. We have begun to develop and post material for the course at:

We'll continue to develop the material over the course of the summer and then pilot its use with the class in the fall.

@petermathijssen Sorry! I think folks were trying to coordinate other info about what resources will be available. I'll ping others to follow up.

I made a proposal for a workshop about physical computing with MicroBlocks and Snap!. :partying_face:

Great! This is sure to be an engaging and worthwhile session.