LAWRIS: A rule-based arduino programming system for young students

Since Arduino is the main entry-level platform to the world of electronic circuits and systems, there are many programming environments that try to ease the burden of Arduino textual programming on young primary students. Although block-based, most of these environments retain the imperative structures of textual programming languages, which are not easily comprehensible by such students. The proposed, in this paper, Learning-Arduino-With-Rules Introductory System (LAWRIS) tries to tackle this problem by adopting a rule-based approach: an Arduino-based pre-specified system can be programmed by constructing rules with very simple and intuitive jigsaw pieces, in a visual, web-based environment. Contrary to other programming environments for Arduino, the main logic of LAWRIS is implemented on the board side and only a configuration string is downloaded to it. Thus, LAWRIS features fast responses to both circuit input changes and program modifications, a very important characteristic for young students. It also imposes minimal overhead on the host system, allows web access of the programming environment, and has very low hardware cost.