The company Tinkerforge produces small electronics boards which are used to control motors and manage various sensors. SCOUT contains modules to control servo motors, stepper motors and color sensors. Since it is very easy to implement software modules for Tinkerforge products we are going to integrate more sensors in the future.

A Tinkerforge system consists of at least one so-called brick. You can stack various bricks to add functions to get more powerful devices. Small sensors called 'bricklets' can be connected to bricks.

Tinkerforge provides software tools to manage and test their products. You can use the Windows software brickv.exe, for example, to scan your system for connected devices. Since devices can be on a network or local, you have to provide the name of the host computer (the local one is called localhost) and a communication port (default value is 4223). Pressing the 'Connect' button shows all connected devices.

Each device, brick or bricklet, shows a dialog to test its functions. The dialog also shows a UID which identifies the device. You will need the UID, host computer name and port to address the device in SCOUT.