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SnapBloks Facts!

A project log for SnapBloks

Tools for students, makers, designers and artists to quickly demonstrate interactive concepts.

ekawahyu-susiloEkawahyu Susilo 04/06/2017 at 08:230 Comments

FACT #1: MODULAR AND REUSABLE SNAP-ON BLOK

The joy of soldering and wiring on breadboard. This has been the fun (or difficult) part for new comers and beginners. But once we become experts in the field, every one of us, get bored real quick of this repetition job. Most of us just want to go straight to see some real actions. For some, it may even too much to ask to solder for just one sensor. SnapBloks requires no soldering and no wiring for the most parts. Each Blok snaps together through magnetic contacts. When we are done with those parts, it can be easily detached and reuse for other projects.

FACT #2: MAGNETIC CONTACTS WORK ALSO AS CONDUCTOR

Magnet is made of brittle material and it is not conductive. So how can we use those three magnetic contacts to deliver power and data? It is simple. Magnet plating and coating material actually is conductor!

FACT #3: SERIALIZER / DESERIALIZER BUILT-IN

The following connection/interfacing: UART, SPI, I2C, CAN, USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc., send data serially from one end to the other. Believe it or not, our fast internet access through Ethernet or Wi-Fi is also another form of serial communication. There is always serial data, sent/received bit-by-bit, in and out of the system. So at least, we need two channels to let data to flow in two directions. How many wires does USB connector have? Four wires, two for powering and two for data transmission (with the exception of USB 3.0 that is in fact full duplex and has more than 4 wiring). Would it be awesome if we could have a computer with hundreds of USB ports and all sensors and actuators are all hot-pluggable to it? Don't get it wrong, we are not going put USB controller in every SnapBloks. But guess what, every time we want to interface things to our computers, we use USB to serial adapter, USB to SPI converter, USB CDC ACM, etc. SnapBloks has built-in serializer/deserializer and it is the only interface among Bloks. I haven't come up with the name yet, but it is based on half-duplex UART).

FACT #4: ARDUINO INSIDE

We ported Arduino to SnapBloks, not because we only care about people working with Arduino, in fact Arduino community is huge! You can almost find any library supported by Arduino. We all love open source, so does SnapBloks. Porting Arduino to SnapBloks really is great for everyone. If you know other programming language such as Python, JavaScript, Lua, or whatever favorite languages you master, you could potentially port it to SnapBloks too.

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