The Brains@Play Starter Kit

This template repository will get you started working with Brains@Play and engaging with our mission to support Universal Web Development.

In particular, we highlight escode: a framework for rapidly prototyping high-performance applications.

Note: The main branch of the brainsatplay-starter-kit repository is being updated regularly to conform to the latest escode distribution. To view source code from our November 2022 recording of ESCode: A First Look, make sure to switch to the firstlook branch.

Our software has been designed from the bottom-up to support visual reactive programming. In addition to an advanced CLI, we have on-browser visualization and editing tools to support the authoring and remixing of ES Components by anyone with a browser.

Installation

To take advantage of escode in your project, all you'll need to do is import the core escompose library, which instantiates applications from .esc.js files.

Basic Installation: From a CDN

import * as escompose from 'https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/escompose@0.1.7/dist/index.esm.js'

Advanced Installation: Using NPM

When using a bundler, you may also install escompose using NPM:

npm install escompose

Usage inside a JavaScript file would look quite similar:

import * as escompose from 'escompose'

Getting Started

To create a functional escode application, you'll need to understand a few fundamental concepts:

ES Components (.esc)

This is covered in the hello world demo.

Reactive Objects

This is covered in the composition demo, which introduces listeners.

These can be triggered inline in your own code files—or configured in .esc format to produce shareable ES Components.

Web Components

This is covered in the web components demo.

Wrapping Existing APIs

This is covered in the game development demo, which usesthe Phaser (v3) API to create a game.

Multimodal Control

This is covered in the previous demo and the physiological signals demo.

Next-Generation Documentation and Educational Websites

This is covered in the education file, which demonstrates how to organize text in an escode project and embed demos inside interactive visual editors.

Acknowledgments

Brains@Play is led by Garrett Flynn and Joshua Brewster, who use contract work and community contributions through Open Collective to support themselves.

The ongoing development of escode for the education of new generations of engineers and researchers has been generously supported by Chris Crawford at Human Technology and Interaction Lab (HTIL) of the University of Alabama.