Released: Enchanting 0.2.3

[clinton10]

Greetings, everyone.

I'm pleased to announce the release of Enchanting v0.2.3.

Enchanting is a friendly, graphical programming environment for the NXT, based on Scratch (and BYOB and leJOS). It makes programming the NXT fun again! It is easy enough for a beginner, and has enough depth to be of use to an intermediate-to-advanced roboticist.

Here's a video to give you a taste in under two minutes.




Enchanting is free and open-source, includes German and French translations, and runs on Windows and Mac OS X (and somewhat on Linux). There are several more videos, an iBook, and cards to show you how to use it, thoughts from people who've used Enchanting, a list of bugs to be aware of, and some ideas for really simple mechanisms to program.

As for advanced robotics, you can easily program using a behaviour-based design, (as hinted at in the video above, and shown in the extended version, or on Enchanting card #12), and you can use recursion, lists, and complex math -- I have videos (and include sample programs) that draw a dragon fractal and Mandelbrot set. Indeed, I'd say that this tool lets you tap into the power of leJOS, and into many of the tools of computer science.

I'll watch for and answer questions on these forums (if you wouldn't mind putting '[enchanting]' in the subject line), and over at the leJOS forums, and if anyone wants to help out on the project, I'd be delighted.