Controlling robots using JavaScript

Sudar Muthu (@sudarmuthu)Research Engineer, Yahoo! Labshttp://hardwarefun.comhttp://github.com/sudar

Who am I?

Research Engineer by profession Creates robots as hobby Prefers Arduino Prefers JavaScript at work Why not combine both of them? .. and that’s what I am going to talk about today

Why hardware for a software hacker?

Fun!

Demohttp://hardwarefun.com/projects/asimijs

Let’s start with a demo

Participate in the demo

Visithttp://hardwarefun.com:3000

http://hardwarefun.com/projects/asimijs

Control the bot at stage

#asimijs @hardwarefun

Arduino Visual Basic for hardware Includes both Hardware and software

Photo credit Arduino team

Interfacing Arduino with JavaScript

Using serial connection (node-serialport) Using abstraction (like johnny-five or duino) Using serial Bluetooth connection (asimijs)

Using Serial Connection

You need node-serialport - https://github.com/voodootikigod/node-serialport

var SerialPort = require("serialport").SerialPort, arduino = new SerialPort("/dev/tty/ACM1");

// when data is received from arduinoarduino.on("data", function (data) { arduino.write(new Buffer[data]); console.log("Got: " + data);});

// if there was any errorarduino.on("error", function (data) { console.log("Error: " + data);});

Using Abstraction

Build on top of node-serialport - https://github.com/voodootikigod/node-serialport

Options include Johnny-five - https://github.com/rwldrn/johnny-five and duino - https://github.com/ecto/duino

Load the firmdata program into Arduino It provides the necessary abstraction Write code using a node.js library Profit

Demo

Let there be LIGHT

Codevar five = require("johnny-five"), board = new five.Board();

board.on("ready", function() {

// Create an Led on pin 13 (new five.Led(13)).strobe(1000);

});

Hardware setup

Reading sensor data

What you need?

Any sensor and a LED

Reading sensor datavar five = require("johnny-five"), board, led, photoresistor;

board = new five.Board();board.on("ready", function() {

// Create a new `photoresistor` hardware instance. photoresistor = new five.Sensor({pin: "A2”, freq: 250}); led = new five.Led(13);

// "read" get the current reading from the photoresistor photoresistor.on("read", function( err, value ) { if (value > 50) { led.on(); } else { led.off(); } console.log( value, this.normalized ); }); // Inject the `sensor` hardware into the Repl instance's context; // allows direct command line access board.repl.inject({ pot: photoresistor });});

Using serial Bluetooth connection

Bluetooth shield gives wireless capability to Arduino A Bluetooth connection appears as serial port in your

computer Using node-serialport you can talk wirelessly to Arduino And that’s what I did for demo ;)

Using serial Bluetooth connection

var SerialPort = require("serialport").SerialPort, bt = new SerialPort("/dev/cu.FireFly-CCFA-SPP");

// when data is received from bluetoothbt.on("data", function (data) { bt.write(new Buffer[data]); console.log("Got: " + data);});

// error reading bluetooth serial portbt.on("error", function (data) { console.log("Error: " + data);});

How the demo worked

Node.js Server

Admin page

User pageUser page

User page

Node Client

Links

AsimiJS – The demo that I showed initially http://hardwarefun.com/projects/asimijs

Asimi – A simple bot using Arduino http://hardwarefun.com/project/asimi

Getting started with hardware programming http://hardwarefun.com/tutorials/getting-started-with-hardware-programming

Getting started with Arduino http://hardwarefun.com/tutorials/getting-started-with-arduino-and-avr

Node-serialport https://github.com/voodootikigod/node-serialport

Johnny Five https://github.com/rwldrn/johnny-five

Questions

Thank You

Sudar Muthu (@sudarmuthu)http://hardwarefun.comhttp://gitbub.com/sudar