The project aims to create a Visual Based IDE for Arduino Boards, with a aim that anyone can code. The IDE consists of Just Blocks which when arranged generate relevant code automatically. The Blocks are divided into various categories so that the user finds it easy to find required easily without any hassle.
The Project just uses Javascript currently only. At its core we are usin Google Blockly for Block and Code generation. Basically we are extending Google Blockly in this project. But there is a samll catch Google Blockly support many dyanmically typed languages like PHP, Javascript, Python, Lua and Dart. The Official Google Blockly Library does not support statically typed languages like C. And for Arduino Programming C based syntax is heavily used !!!. So it makes sense to first extend Blockly to support C and then extend it further to complete this project. And extending Blockly is superrr easy and fun. Google has done pretty great job at documenting Blockly, you can find the documentation here.
But currently just to check the viablity of the project i was able to find a Library which already extends Blockly to support C. Documentation of which can be found here.
Most of the current visual based IDEs only support Arduino Uno. We probably might be first IDE to support all these boards , so fingers crossed.
2) Add Support to as many sensors as we can. (they can be led, lcd, ultrasonic senor, smoke detector, Serial communication and many more.)
By adding support to these sensors means craeting all necessary block required to write code for these sensor. is not a really dificult task as such but jsu we need to study basic code of these sendors and create their blocks.
The code currently can be downloaded after finishing the coding part, but it would be great if the code could be saved to users personal drive. This will include concepts like API and authorization and access token. (i am particularly interested in this stuff).
As i have previoulsy said that we are currently extending this library for C. I have some serious concerns on using cake core, as lacks many features available in current blockly version. It would we great if ourself could extend Blockly to support C. In this way we will learn alot and probably write better quality Blockly core. I am mostly targerting the learning part, as it seems exciting to me!!!!
5) Create Documentation for users regarding hardware connections and if possible also draw a schematic for ur hardware connections
Our library can generate documentation regarding automatically as user writes his code. Let me take an example lets say if the uses uses a Servo motor code block to write code that turns the motor by 90 degree. and the user using our blocks will have to specify he will connect the servo at a particular pin lets say pin 3. Then we can automatically generate a harware documentation, stating that the user is using servo motor and it should be connected to pin 3. also we can add information regarding servo configurations as well. Now this feature might look silly, but i think it is very useful as the code will document itself and does need gop through the code to understand hardware connections. It will also come handy to represent this documentation somewhere without taking extra efforts.
according to current implementation the IDE is web based ( all it processing is done on client side ). But it would be better if we are able to make a desktop app for the same.