Chapter 10. Real-world stimuli

Scratch enables you to incorporate real-world information into your projects using webcams and sensory boards known as PicoBoards. The webcam support allows us to import pictures as costumes and backgrounds for inclusion into our projects.

Stimulate your sprites with real-world sensory data by connecting a PicoBoard from Playful Invention Company to the USB port on a Windows or Macintosh computer. The board provides several sensors that turn sound, light, motion, touch, and electrical resistance into inputs that we can use to animate our projects.

In this chapter, we will:

• Import pictures with a webcam

• Install a PicoBoard

• Make Scratch respond to motion, sound, touch, light, and electrical resistance

Let's bring the outside world to our projects.