Johnny-Five v1.0 – JavaScript Robotics and IoT Framework

http://johnny-five.io/news/v1_0/

by bpierre • 8 years ago

114 34 8 years ago

johnny-five.io

DiabloD3• 8 years ago

So, in fact, Johnny-Five is alive?

LandoCalrissian• 8 years ago

They have increased board support quite a bit since the last time I checked it out, very cool.

eksemplar• 8 years ago

We use IoT quite a bit in the public sector, especially for things like traffic, weather and parking data, and we’ve been running much of it on our lorawan setup, using node on the actual devices.

I wouldn’t have thought it at first, but JavaScript is turning out to be our most important language for driving IoT, and while I haven’t heard about Johnny-five before, it looks pretty good.

CharlesW• 8 years ago

If you're interested in JavaScript and IoT, check out Moddable[1] and their open source SDK/runtime[2] as well. It's by a small group of great engineers who know how to build tiny, performant runtimes.

[1] http://www.moddable.com/ [2] https://github.com/Moddable-OpenSource/moddable

miketery• 8 years ago

What are you finding the advantages of using JavaScript over another language like say python for those IoT applications?

hartbeatnt2• 8 years ago

same benefit for using JavaScript for anything -- much larger pool of engineers to draw from

cweagans2• 8 years ago

Just what I've always wanted: another use-case to shoehorn javascript into.

dang2• 8 years ago

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

eschaton2• 8 years ago

This teaches us that “do everything with Node.js” isn’t as popular an opinion as HN headlines might make one believe.

wiradikusuma2• 8 years ago

So is this like MicroPython (but for JS)? https://micropython.org/

ianbicking2• 8 years ago

My understanding of Johnny Five is that it's a way to drive an external board from a "normal" computer. So you aren't putting any execution (or JavaScript) onto the Arduino (or other embedded) controller. Instead you load their premade firmware onto the controller, hook that controller up to your computer via some serial connection, and then the Johnny Five library lets you control everything from the main computer.

It seemed kind of trivial when I first heard about it, but now that I've experimented some with these things it's not that trivial, and it's a reasonable approach. Especially for robotics – an Arduino board isn't a good way to drive a robot (too limited), but it's a good way to drive many (but not all) of the specific components you might want to control. Then the real brain can be a Raspberry Pi or some other proper computer.

wiradikusuma2• 8 years ago

thank you for the explanation. so in production, it must be paired with Pi/real computer?

but why use this if Pi has support for sensors and stuff already? (other than, "because I've already bought Arduino")

rwaldron• 8 years ago

That's correct, but only half correct :)

Johnny-Five programs can run on board any SBC that runs Linux and can support Node.js. For those platforms, GPIO and serial bus interfaces are interacted with directly; examples include Raspberry Pi, Intel Edison (+Galileo 1 & 2, Joule), Tessel 2, Linino and pcDuino

nullbyte• 8 years ago

As much as I love JavaScript, I have always preference synchronous languages (like, say, Python) for robotics programming.

newfocogi• 8 years ago

In what way is Python any more of a synchronous langues than JavaScript?

netinstructions• 8 years ago

The next line of code in JavaScript isn't always going to be executed after the previous line is complete. This is unlike Python, which generally executes each line after the previous line is complete.

Hence all the callbacks, promises, async/awaits patterns to learn in JavaScript..

Moghammed• 8 years ago

I really love javascript for programming behaviour in robotics. That's so much more intuitive to do in an event based language.

lxe2• 8 years ago

Johnny Five doesn't let JavaScript (Node) run on the microcontrollers themselves -- it requires a USB (or serial) link firmware installed in the board.

The program runs on your computer and issues commands to the firmware via the link. This makes the board "tethered" to the PC so to speak.

That said, hooking up a Raspberry PI running node to an Arduino sort of alleviates the "tethered-ness" and I believe it is the lowest effort barrier to entry into robotics and presents endless creative opportunities.

tcgarvin• 8 years ago

I believe you're incorrect, Johnny five supports both runtime models.

Was playing with Johnny Five yesterday (while they were releasing 1.0, fun to watch), and was deploying my node project code to my Tessel 2, which then ran independently of my laptop.

I was amazed at how easy it was to go from 0 to deployed code running reliably on the (detached, untethered) dev board. At least when working with the Tessel 2, they really think through the dev experience end-to-end.

[Edit: Tessel, not Tessle]

bsimpson2• 8 years ago

Make Magazine's Make Controller Kit followed the same model. Unfortunately, it was maintained by one guy during nights and weekends (which meant it was never well supported and became deprecated before it was useful). Still, the model of allowing developers to learn robotics in whatever language they're comfortable in is fantastic for making the field accessible to newcomers!

I tried my hand at an MCK because I could do it from ActionScript, a language I was already comfortable with. Asking users to learn both about controlling hardware and a new programming language/model simultaneously steepens the barrier to entry versus decoupling those things.

lxe2• 8 years ago

This is true for some boards. For realtime OS-less microcontroller boards like Arduino, the execution model is what I've described: http://johnny-five.io/platform-support/#arduino-uno

For beefier linux boards, like Tessel and Beagle Board, it's what you've described: http://johnny-five.io/platform-support/#beaglebone-black http://johnny-five.io/platform-support/#tessel-2

applecrazy• 8 years ago

This is awesome. I met some of the Johnny-Five devs at Maker Faire a couple years ago, and they were demoing an interesting web-application controlled robot with a camera at the Intel booth. Glad to see that they've finally hit 1.0.

But as the top commenter mentions, still no standalone support on devices like Arduino, which is what prevented me from using it in my projects. (I don't know if it's possible to fit a node runtime onto something as small as an Arduino, anyways)

anonyxyz• 8 years ago

Check out espruino

eschaton2• 8 years ago

It’s really too bad people aren’t doing things like this in Lisp. There are so many more tools for building useful abstractions and a rich history of real work in the field to draw upon, performance is very good, and CFFI works great for interfacing with very low level C-callable code. (It didn’t take me long at all to use CFFI to bridge to Intel’s MRAA on the Edison, for example.)

dmitripopov• 8 years ago

Are you aware that there is a musician named John 5? He worked with Marilyn Manson and now works with Rob Zombie.

Johnny-Five v1.0 – JavaScript Robotics and IoT Framework

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