In a previous post I showed how to assemble the Marty robot. At the end of that you could control Marty using your phone, but now I wanted to do something more creative.
An easy way to program is using Scratch, which is a block based programming language. It is a popular tool for children to learn to program.
Sadly you can't use the standard Scratch website as it doesn't have the module to control Marty. But the company behind Marty does provide a version of Scratch that you can access from the web. I believe you can also run a locally installed version of Scratch with the appropriate plugin if you are able to install your own software. The website is running the beta version of Scratch 3, so I suspect the URL may change in the future or it may be possible to use the standard Scratch website. Either way, the following instructions will probably still be useful.
You start out with standard Scratch code blocks. The next step is to enable the Marty extension by clicking the add extension button:
Select the Marty extension:
Now you need to connect to your Marty. Make sure it is powered on and connected to WiFi. If everything is working you should be able to see your robot (mine is called Fred) and click Connect:
A few more clicks and now your in Scratch with some new Marty blocks! My first program was to get Marty to wiggle using the "get ready" and "wiggle" blocks:
And to prove it really does work, he's my Marty dancing on the kitchen floor: