Useful Tools

• for Windows computers
• Notepad++ : a simple, powerful text editor, great for simple HTML and almost any type of text file
• 7zip : a simple secure way to compress and password protect files - pick the 64 bit msi file
• Freemind - a simple mind-mapping tool, great for collecting your thoughts - download directly

Scratch3

Download Scratch to your computer, so you can work offline.

Or open the user guide in new page

IDE - integrated development environments

• tools to code, test and debug your programs
• Mu (say it as mew), a cool 'starter' IDE for your Python programs
• PyCharm , an advanced IDE for Python
• Arduino - go to the download page and or just click 'Windows Installer, for Windows XP and up' .

Installing Python on your PC

• Install Python3 on your computer
• Ask another ninja or a mentor to help you do the install

Installing packages into Python

• You will eventually need to install python packages (additional libraries) to make some programs work
• open a windows command prompt - right click on windows symbol, bottom left. Click Run then type 'cmd' and hit enter
• Then type pip3 install packagename
• You will need to import libraries into your code - see the very first line in the program below (tkinter does not need to be pipped, you already have it).

from tkinter import Tk, Label, Button

class MyFirstGUI:

    def __init__(self, master):

        self.master = master

        master.title("A simple GUI")

        self.label = Label(master, text="This is our first GUI!")

        self.label.pack()

        self.greet_button = Button(master, text="Greet", command=self.greet)

        self.greet_button.pack()

        self.close_button = Button(master, text="Close", command=master.quit)

        self.close_button.pack()

    def greet(self):

        print("Greetings!")

root = Tk()

my_gui = MyFirstGUI(root)

root.mainloop()

EV3 - Python

• How to setup your EV3 to run with Python
• Some sample programs to get you going

microPython

• a tiny version of Python that runs on tiny tiny computers like the NodeMcu and the ESP8266
• all you need to get going at microPython.org : we do not need Pyboard
• downloads for microPython - pick the second one in the list
• software so the computer can 'see' microPython, called firmware - pick the first one in the list

getting software for :

• mBlock3 and mBlock5
• Scratch3
• Python to EV3
• AppInventor - it's so cool
• microPython for things on the Internet of Things
• Websites : HTML and CSS
• Databases and spreadsheets : Excel / Sheets / MySQL/MariaDb and MongoDb