Tangicode

Published: Apr 11, 2014 by K. E. Claytor

Tangicode logo

The idea behind Tangicode is to bring logic / programming / coding to a tangible level so younger kids can interact with it. To carry this out in a weekend we decided that the easiest option would be to do image processing. Technically, we let the kid play around with the programming “blocks”. This is then recorded, and translated into a program. The character in the video game then carries out the program.

This system has some specific advantages, namely;

it engages kids’ physical memory,
they don’t have to re-design their entire program to make a change, they only have to move a block,
they get immediate feedback allowing them to make easier connections between the logic and the results.

While this works very well for a tech demo, for the future we are pursuing tech avenues which would not require the camera. Instead we are looking at an option where a mat would read the blocks and then interface with an tablet for the video game component.

If you’re interested, follow us on twitter for more information.

You can get the source code for our demo.

Here’s a cool video of it in action:

I was interested in temperature, humidity monitoring around the house to see if there were any trends, or if the basement was getting too humid. In particular, looking for a low-effort way to get data into a dashboard, I was eager to try out the AdafruitIO framework. They limit you to two managed whippersnapper devices (but you can have more using your IO key), and 10 feeds (this is the real limiter, with each stream of data being one feed).

After the success of the last Netrunner laser-cut ID’s I thought I would do another set for East Coast Nationals 2023. This was right before Smoke (one of my favorite runners) was going to rotate, and The Outfit was doing super strong, so I had an easy time deciding what to do.

I’ve been using the laser cutter/engraver to generate some Netrunner identities for some time, and finally got some that look really good.