App Inventor Extension Tools

[Geo Massar]

Hi folks,

Where do I find tools to develop AIX extensions? Is it possible to create an extension using AI blocks? If not, how do we make a user-defined library in App Inventor?

Why those questions to ask? Currently, I am developing Internet of Things (IoT) apps using BluetoothLE extension. By using the extension, it will require a ton of blocks to develop a single app for such a slave device. I have several similar devices to control/communicate with. It would be necessary to make a library which is to be used to develop apps for the slave devices.

[Evan Patton]

Currently one can only create non-visible component extensions. It is not possible to create blocks-only or visible extensions. I've started a document on writing extensions based on our BluetoothLE extension. This is the strategy we used for developing the Arduino 101 and BBC micro:bit extensions. You may want to follow that and let me know if you run into any problems. You should also join our open source dev group where you can ask questions about the development process.

Evan

[Geo Massar]

@Evan Thank you for the reply.

I'll study your doc and might have some questions to ask later. A few days ago I posted "show and tell" message at Makeblock forum (see the post.) For the mobile app, mBot extension is developed to control a robot by someone else. The bluetooth module for the Arduino-based robot is BLE 4.0. I am attempting to find its source code in order to understand how those devices communicate to each other. 

[Evan Patton]

If you are looking for our BLE sources, you can find them in the appinventor-extensions repository on GitHub. I don't know whether or not Makeblock publishes their sources.

Evan

[Geo Massar]

I have decided to go along with MIT App Inventor + IoT in order to understand the interaction of Bluetooth LE (better known as Smart Bluetooth.} In fact, I already made an order for Intel Android 101 board in addition to my collection of boards. After the visitation, I will return to Makeblock projects to continue my work. My goal is to merge the two, namely, MIT App Inventor and Makeblock, successfully. Both are utilizing App Inventor and Scratch, respectively and are ideal for STEM education curriculum. 

Questions: Where do I find a forum that deals with MIT App Inventor + IoT? Is there any other IoT tutorials besides Healthy Plant project?

[Evan Patton]

Depending on the questions you ask there might be a few relevant forums. When it comes to just using the extensions, you could ask here. I've also sent you an invitation to the IOT beta testers group where we release test versions prior to public release. There is also the open source forum if you are looking for help when working with the App Inventor sources as part of building an extension.

Evan

[Andres Daniel]

hello Evan although the extensions visible in the design panel can not be shown, if you can generate the blocks to create widget from the block panel this is my channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4mjFBrjR68 there are many examples of extensions that do this kind of work greetings

also in http://puravidaapps.com/extensions.php is the list of extensions of this type

regards

Andres

[Evan Patton]

Hi Andres,

This is "correct" from the point of view of the goal, but specifically in the App Inventor dev community when we discuss components there are visible components, which are manipulated as part of the screen in the designer, and nonvisible components, which are not. Given taht we do not sandbox extensions, it is entirely possible to manipulate the view hierarchy with nonvisible components, but this is not recommended.

Evan

[Andres Daniel]

not much of the internal behavior of inventor but if you can put an id in the components of horizontal layout it would be easier to clean the view and manipulate it from an extension without need to have a block of initiation and to add a reference image in the panel of design to give the provisions of wide and high forgiveness if it is a crazy idea. but now what I am trying to in a label put a number and then look for that number in all the textview views and pass it to the id and then with the id to manipulate the view

saludos