Lesson 4 : Getting Familiar with Quarky

Lesson Overview

Quarky is going to be your friend throughout this adventurous journey. So it’s better that you get to know about him. In this lesson, we will do the same.

Quarky: Your AI Learning Buddy

Quarky is an electronic board with a lot of features using which you can make numerous exciting projects. You can program Quarky to make expressions, play sounds, detect touch, and much more. Let’s look at its various features.

You don’t have to remember any of the features right now as we’ll go through each of them in detail in the coming lessons.

Quarky comes with

• 7×5 RGB LED matrix (35 LEDs)
• 2 tactile switches
• 5 touch pins.
• 2 IR sensors
• 2 servo ports
• 6 Generic I/O ports

Quarky Meets PictoBlox

Let’s begin by first connecting Quarky to PictoBlox. Select your preferred type of device i.e. either the desktop/laptop or your smartphone and follow the instructions.

Desktop

Follow the steps below for connecting Quarky to PictoBlox:

1. First, connect Quarky to your laptop using USB cable.
   
2. Next, open PictoBlox on your desktop.
3. After that, select Block Coding as your coding environment.
4. Then, click the Board button in the toolbar and select board as Quarky.
   
5. Next, select the appropriate Serial port if the Quarky is connected via USB or the Bluetooth Port if you want to connect Quarky via Bluetooth and press Connect.
   

And voila! Quarky is now connected to PictoBlox.

Mobile

Follow the steps below for connecting Quarky to PictoBlox:

1. First, power ON Quarky.
2. Open PictoBlox on your smartphone. Go to My Space and make a new project by clicking the ‘+(plus)’ button in the bottom-right corner.
   
3. Then, tap the Board button in the top-right corner of the toolbar.
   Select board as Quarky.
   
4. Next, tap the Connect button:
   Select your device from the list.
   

And voila! Quarky is now connected to PictoBlox. Now, let’s make a script in PictoBlox to display expressions on Quarky’s matrix!

Let’s Code!

One-Time Display

Follow the steps below to make the script for displaying expressions:

1. First, go to the Display palette and add a display () emotion block into the scripting area. Then, from the drop-down, select happy.
2. Click the display () emotion block. You’ll notice that Quarky is now happy!
   Is there any way through which you don’t have to always click on the block to run it? Yes, there is – the hat blocks. The hat blocks in PictoBlox allow you to decide an event that would automatically execute the script. PictoBlox has several hat blocks in the Events palette. The most commonly used block is the when flag clicked block.
3. Drag and drop the when flag clicked block into the scripting area from the Events palette.
4. Run the script by clicking the green flag.

Other LED Emotions

Create a script that changes the emotions when different keys are pressed on the keyboard.

Save the project file as LED Emotions.

Assignment

Before you move on to the next lesson, a small assignment awaits you!

You must upload the PictoBlox program you created in this activity to the website. Submitting the assignment is a must in order to receive the certificate after completing the course.

Follow the steps below to upload your assignment:

1. Click on Browse.
2. Search and Select your saved Project file(.sb3) and Click Open.
3. Click on Upload to submit the assignment.

The file type allowed is the SB3 file generated from the PictoBlox program. The maximum file size allowed is 5 MB.

Good luck!