Espruino Hack Chat

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@Gordon Williams will be hosting the Hack Chat this week.

Hack Chats are (almost) always on Fridays at noon PDT.

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In this chat, we'll be talking about programming microcontrollers in JavaScript, using Espruino.

Espruino is a compact JavaScript interpreter that runs on microcontrollers, allowing you to program and debug them from almost any platform with no need for external programming hardware. JavaScript makes it trivial to create power-efficient event-based code, and really simplifies the creation of internet-connected devices.

Gordon Williams has worked in 3D graphics, compiler, and website design, and has been making JavaScript-powered embedded devices for the last 5 years. He's run 3 successful KickStarter campaigns from the Oxfordshire countryside and has shipped over 20,000 Espruino-powered devices, with thousands of third party boards also running the open source JS interpreter.

TL;DR :: we'll be discussing:

Interpreted languages on microcontrollers
Creating devices with Espruino
Putting Espruino boards on the internet, with WiFi, GSM and LoRa
JS Interpreter design and optimization

Here's the sheet to guide the discussion.

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Espruino HackChat Transcript
Jordan Bunker • 08/25/2017 at 21:16 • 0 comments

Shayna Welcome @Gordon Williams :) We'll likely get rolling around :05 mins after so everyone has a chance to enter the room + get settled.

Gordon Williams Ok, great - thanks!

Boian Mitov Hello @Gordon Williams :-)

Arsenijs Hi @Gordon Williams !

Shayna In the meantime -- if any of you have questions, the discussion doc is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17i8Vg_fKYdfL2MBg523vcmtmqw8Bu4ot0i4ro5Xl-us/edit#gid=0

Gordon Williams Hi! :)

jipe_rey Hi everyone

Shayna Hello!

ayushijha2012 Hey :)

todbot hi!

Gordon Williams It's nice to see some good tech questions in the Hack Chat Spreadsheet :)

Shayna Welcome to today's Hack Chat, y'all. @Gordon Williams is joining us to discuss Espruino & microcontroller programming with JavaScript :)

Gordon Williams Hello!

Shayna Thank you for joining us today @Gordon Williams :)

Gordon Williams So, I guess I should do some kind of intro?

Shayna That would be terrific!

Radomir Dopieralski yes, please

Gordon Williams Cool. So I've been making stuff (software and hardware) as a hobby since I was a kid, but after a KickStarter campaign I did 4 years ago I've been working basically full-time on the Open Source (OSSW and OSHW) Espruino JS interpreter. I'm not VC funded or anything - all my work on the hardware, software, and all the support was paid for either by KickStarters, or people buying Espruino boards.

Gordon Williams That's it really - I've made a few different boards that run the interpreter, and I just got a book of projects for it published - but it's amazing how it can turn into a full-time thing

Shayna Awesome

todbot yay an Espruino book! Can't wait to see it

Shayna Ready to take some questions?

Gordon Williams Absolutely, yes!

Shayna Terrific. For those who've just joined, you can enter your questions for @Gordon Williams here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17i8Vg_fKYdfL2MBg523vcmtmqw8Bu4ot0i4ro5Xl-us/edit#gid=0

Shayna First Q is from @todbot ! "Is Espruino on Cortex-M0 possible? (e.g. SAMD21)"

Gordon Williams Yes, totally! The main Espruino boards are Cortex M3 and M4 based, but I ported it to the BBC micro:bit a while back, and it runs pretty well on there.

todbot micro:bit is NRF51822, correct?

Gordon Williams It's a bit constrained because after the Bluetooth stack you only have 6kB RAM for the interpreter, but it's usable for simple stuff. The SAMD21 should be a lot better - it's 256kB flash, 32kB RAM?

Gordon Williams And yes, it is NRF51822 - and M0

todbot yes, something like that. it's a current favorite

Gordon Williams Espruino's pretty portable - the gotcha is implementing the hardware API... There's a really simple abstraction layer though

todbot That's cool. I can only barely imagine JavaScript on a $2 microcontroller like the SAMD21 or NRF51822.

Shayna Next up, MIchal Mühlpachr asks: "What do think about an mJS approach?" ( https://github.com/cesanta/mjs )

Gordon Williams I think this touches on another question later, but as well as hardware SPI/I2C there's software - so all you have to implement is serial and GPIO and you're basically sorted for simple stuff

Gordon Williams Thanks! Targeting cheap stuff was always my plan... I've just had to be swayed a bit by what I can do that also allows me to feed myself :)

Gordon Williams Cool - so mJS is interesting. I'm a huge fan of someone coming up with some standard for 'embedded JS'

Gordon Williams Espruino doesn't implement everything - there's some horrible stuff in there, and even more insane things keep getting added all the time

Radomir Dopieralski there is a new samd21-based trinket board now :)

Gordon Williams (in the JS spec :) ) - but personally I think mJS is maybe a bit too limited

Gordon Williams I know. There's also a Flora nRF51822 board which you can flash with Espruino - I just don't think anyone's done it yet ;)

Shayna From @PaulG : "Do you plan to create an Espruino LoRa (node not a gateway) or Espruino ESP32?" ...
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Espruino Hack Chat

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