I can really get my students doing cool robotics and machine projects if someone can help me integrate three open source tools - scratch from MIT (scratch has a motor patch but it integrates with an expensive lego motor) - ardruino uno - and a common and cheap motor (http://www.pitsco.com/store/detail.aspx?KeyWords=motor&ID=2997 )

If we can integrate these three things - then we could break the cost barrier to robotics in the classroom.  We’ve learned to use plastic gears, hot glue, wood dowel rods, straws for bearings and wood sticks. We can built some really ingenious machines!  One student built a sun tracking solar panel.  But for all the students to do this kind of work – I need a better entry level software package for programming – have you seen scratch?  I just need it to work with the above cheap motor.    

I did get someone to design a electronic schematic using fritzing for the motor – it used 4 transistors and I can upload a picture of the schematic.

Thanks

Jack Kyle

jkyle@indyschools.com

www.ohec.weebly .com

There are various projects that are trying to integrate Scratch with Arduino. Some are extensions for Scratch, for example S4A.

Others are adapting the Scratch UI for Arduino, for example:

Modkit

amici

Minibloq

Maybe one of those fulfills your needs?