Using Paper Playground¶

Before we begin, make sure you have installed Paper Playground and set up your equipment.

Interface Overview and Startup¶

Start by opening up all pages of the interface¶

Navigate to localhost:3000 in your browser and either click the links or open in your browser:

1. Camera (localhost:3000/camera.html)
2. Canvas (localhost:3000/projector.html)
3. Interactive Display (localhost:3000/display.html)
4. Creator (localhost:3000/creator.html)

What is the Camera page?¶

The Camera page is where all the action happens for turning your paper programs interactive!

On this page you will find the preview of your webcam, a preview of the full JavaScript for your currently selected paper program, and a plethora of options in the sidebar. Explore the headings in the sidebar to create and navigate between spaces, calibrate your webcam to detect paper programs, print and virtually preview programs and markers, and fine-tune your detection.

You'll use this page to match up where your papers are in space with visuals on a projector. Think of it as your play space.

What are Preview Papers? ¶

If you are quickly iterating or just not in a position to print physical papers, you can still see how your code runs! Preview paper programs can be placed into the camera view at any time and the code will run as through you put a physical paper in view.

While a lot more can be done to help the preview papers mimic how you can move a physical piece of paper, there are a few features currently in place to help:

• Move the papers by dragging inside of the boundaries of the preview.
• Resize the papers by dragging an edge.
• Drag the green square to rotate the paper.
• Select the scissors to 'cut' the paper into four independently moveable corners.
• Once cut, you can rejoin the paper with a new button.
• Preview papers can be removed at any time by selecting the red square.

Preview Markers ¶

Just like preview papers, you can simulate physical paper markers under the Preview Markers sidebar menu. Select the eye icon to place a draggable marker into the video feed that triggers marker-related code in your paper programs.

Organizing your code: Spaces and Projects¶

What is a Space?¶

A space is way of organizing your programs and how you'll locate your programs in the Camera interface to run them. Some software might refer to this as a "workspace", but we prefer to think of it as a playspace!

All of the programs in a space can be for one project or you can create a series of simpler programs that all exist in the same Space. This is completely up to you and we use them for both purposes. There is no limit to the number of Spaces you can have, so focusing each Space on one idea works well.

You might create your own personal space "my-space" and fill it with disparate project ideas you have or create a "frogger-game" space and collect all of the paper programs that will work together to create your project.

What is a Creator Project?¶

When working from the Creator interface, you may notice you can create Projects after selecting space. This is one level deeper than a Space and allows you to have multiple version or different sets of programs that you can send to the selected Space in the Camera interface via the Send to Playground button.

What is the Interactive Display page?¶

The main display! This page is where your visuals and sounds will be displayed and if you're using a projector, the page you'll want to put onto your projector to overlay visuals in your play area!

There are a few helpful additions to this page to help with your creation and play.

Display Controls/Features¶

Position Interval¶

You can adjust the sensitivity of your programs to paper movement (in the event of detection jitter) by moving the Position Interval slider to the right of the Interactive Display.

Print Speech¶

Show Console/Console¶

If you use the phet.paperland.console.log/warn functionality in any custom code section of your programs, that code will display here. See the Paper Playground API for more information.

Regular JavaScript usage of console.log will display in your browser's developer console (F12 menu) as usual, but will not display in the Display Console.

What is the Canvas page?¶

At this time, given the legacy structure of the client, all of the code detected in the Camera is executed through the Canvas. However, in Paper Playground, all development has been focused on paper program output sent to the Display.

If you would like to use vanilla Web Canvas or make use of the projection overlay feature of the legacy Paper Programs project, then this is the page where the code will output. See https://github.com/janpaul123/paperprograms/blob/master/docs/tutorial.md for more on this.

Creating and Editing Programs¶

Creator: Building programs visually¶

See the Creator tutorial.

Editor: If you're comfortable with JavaScript and reading API documents¶

Create new paper programs from the Camera interface (Spaces and Programs on the sidebar). You can copy an existing program from any other Space or start from a fresh template.

Once created, you can edit them in the Editor!

On the Camera interface you'll find a link to the Editor for your space (this is a good link to share with other people who are collaborating on your Space). Each space will need its own Editor window opened. You can tell which space you are in from the query parameter at the end of the Editor page URL (e.g., ../editor.html?my-space)

Open that link (make sure you keep the Camera page open at all times) and select your paper program from the list.

Make some changes in the editor (try changing what text gets drawn on the canvas for starters) and click the "save" button. The changes should now be reflected in the output of the Display or Projector pages.

When you're ready to print that program as a real piece of paper, click the Printer icon beside the program name on the Camera page. Place the newly printed paper in your webcam's view.