User:Gustavo

About Me

I'm a Computer Science student at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras campus.

Progress

Week 1 - May 29 to June 3

May 30

• Created my wiki page.
• Talked with Dr. Dennis Brylow about possible research areas.
• Installed the MUzECS platform and got it working.

June 1

• Began searching for papers on Block-Based programming.
• Me and Sam Olson created a page for the project we're working on: Advancing via MUzECS Platform.

June 2

• Read 2 papers. One based on the Scratch programming interface and another paper based on Snap! high school students' transitions to Java.
• Attempted to get MUzEC's most recent Chromebook web app to work. No success yet.

June 3

• Received a very informative paper from Dr. Brylow and read it. It's about how blocks impact the learnability of languages.

Week 2 - June 4 to June 10

June 5

• Looked up and started learning about Blockly and its alternatives.

June 6

• Attended the Responsible Conduct of Research training.

June 7

• Sam and I came up with a research question and other considerations for the project.

June 8

• Was able to run the latest MUzECS code on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Having issues recognizing the Arduino port on Chromebooks.

June 9

• Began learning how to use the Johnny-Five library for Node.js.

Week 3 - June 11 to June 17

June 12

• Continued understanding MUzECS source code.
• Kept on attempting to get the Chromebook to work with last version of MUzECS. It still does not appear in the "Serial Ports".
  • Tried it in normal mode and developer mode.
  • Tried it after a factory reset, and both modes after reset.
  • Tried all Chromebook channels.
  • Tried "lsusb" in developer mode, the board does appear there.
  • Tried connecting with other Chromebook applications, none of them work.

June 14

• Did the ethics quizzes that were required for the REU. Still have to do the assignments.

June 15

• Tried to use another Chromebook, it still doesn't work.
• Talked to Dr. Brylow and considered the possibility of changing research question due to the difficulty of obtaining the required information during this summer.

Week 4 - June 18 to June 24

• Decided to do these things weekly instead of daily since I don't remember what I did the 15th.
• Got the Adafruit Circuit Playground working in the MUzECS chrome app for a basic LED example. Now we need to get the Firmata downloader working.
• Added some source code for AVRgirl-Arduino to support Adafruit Circuit Playground.
• Got avrgirl-arduino to work with circuit playground.
• Got the MUzECS software to work with the circuit playground. Both the "download firmata" and some of the other code.

Week 5 - June 25 to July 1

• Made a pull request for Avrgirl-Arduino. The code we made supports Circuit Playground Classic.
• Found out about the Circuit Playground Express, currently out of stock, but is similar to MUzECS and works offline with MakeCode.
• Worked on the mini presentation.
• Gave the mini presentation.

Week 6 - July 2 to July 8

• Found out how to add and remove blockly blocks in the source code.
• Found a nodejs library that helps out with Circuit Playground peripherals: 'playground-io', attempting to get that working in the Chrome app. This library has to run and be installed in the user-created app, not just the overall project.

Week 9 - July 9 to July 15

• Instead of using 'playground-io', opted to manually set the circuit playground's peripheral's.
• We got the piezo speaker to work.
• We got the light sensor to work.
• We got the thermometer to work.
• We have attempted to get the accelerometer to work with different controllers and by using snippets of the playground-io source code without success.
• We realized that the Sound Sensor suddenly makes the Button 4 to stop working. Asked on Stack Overflow.
• We got the RGB LEDs to work.

Week 10 - July 16 to July 22

• Working on a paper to submit to the "Blocks and Beyond Workshop"
• Got the accelerometer to work. Haven't implemented the code in the Chrome App yet.