Instead of a conventional status bar to track the progress of the data transmission, I decided it would be more fun to make a ‘progress bug.’ The bug would look like the robot and march across the screen as the data is being transmitted.

So the first task was to render Grisbot as a sprite. For reference, here again is how the robot looks in real life (prior to adding photocells):

And here again is the rendering in Sketchup of how the robot is positioned to read data from a computer screen:

So here, on the communications screen of my Scratch program, is the Grisbot sprite patiently waiting for the computer screen to transmit data:

And here’s how it works in action: