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What is a Brick?

Bricks are code building blocks that can be used in our Apps. They are designed to make the App design and coding easier, by making complex code available through only a couple of lines of code.

Bricks vary in functionality: some embed AI models (computer vision, audio recognition), others are used to provide networking & web interfaces. But they are used in the same way: by importing them into the main.py script of our App.

How Bricks are Used in Apps​

Bricks are imported into the main.py (Python) file that runs on the Linux system. When importing a Brick, we can access its functions, such as making requests to a weather API service, launching a web server, or classifying the video input of a camera.

For example, importing the weather_forecast Brick will make it possible to use:

  • get_forecast_by_city("London")

Where the API call to the weather forecast platform is already pre-made and ready to be used.

Bricks in Action

How to Import a Brick to an App​

To import a Brick to an App, we can click on the "Add Brick" button inside an App.

Add Bricks

From the list, we can select a Brick, and add it to our App:

Add Bricks

Your Turn​

  • Open an existing App (or create a new one) in Arduino App Lab.
  • Click the Add Brick button inside the App.
  • Browse the list and pick a Brick that interests you — for example, the weather_forecast Brick.
  • Add the Brick to your App and open main.py.
  • Call one of the Brick's functions — for example: get_forecast_by_city("London") — and print the result.
  • Run the App and read the output in the terminal.
tip

Try swapping the city name with your own city and see if the Brick returns accurate data.