from Hacker News

Tessel: A microcontroller that runs JavaScript

by darkmethod on 6/9/14, 6:58 PM with 88 comments

  • by justincormack on 6/9/14, 9:11 PM

    Actually, a microcontroller that runs Lua. They released the source for the JavaScript to Lua compiler today https://github.com/tessel/colony-compiler

  • by VLM on 6/9/14, 8:38 PM

    My advice is the wrong tagline is up. If you want an embedded device running JS or higher level than C anyway, you toss in a raspi with much better hardware specs for much less money.

    The secret sauce appears to be (at a glance) great software support (edited to add, I'm talking about "high level bindings" like JS... there's plenty of C for arduino, not nearly as much non-C) for a bunch of off the shelf compatible debugged plugin hardware. Also deeply buried in the docs section it appears to draw a Lot less power than a pi when doin "stuff". Of course if you want to blink a LED I think a PIC 10F220 might just slightly have you beat by approximately six orders of magnitude (no kidding, well 4 to 7 depending on blah). Anyway that kind of stuff should be the primary advertising focus, or at least thats what I found interesting.

    I'm fuzzy on the "how easy is getting started" part, at least only after five minutes. Not being clear means it must be as bad as gearing up for FPGA work (just kidding I'm sure its not that bad). If its good, this might be an additional secret sauce. Here's a 60 second video from opening box to blinking LED (or, whatever)

    At least that was the first five minutes impression from a hardware guy who knows the market. And I've now spent more time typing and thinking than I spent looking.

  • by cobookman on 6/10/14, 1:10 AM

    I wonder how the timing on the micro-controller is. Is the JavaScript still async? While JavaScript +/-10ms is fine on a computer, when messing with signals that really limits you. Mind you this could be overcome by adding some flag before the code to specify it to be run synchronously...or something like that.

  • by johnohara on 6/9/14, 9:15 PM

    Device looks to be based on an NXP LPC1830FET180 microcontroller which uses an ARM Cortex-M3 processor at 180MHz.

    http://www.nxp.com/products/microcontrollers/cortex_m3/LPC18...

    The product page seems to indicate it does a more than run JavaScript.

  • by habosa on 6/9/14, 9:17 PM

  • by GuiA on 6/9/14, 8:37 PM

    $100 for something vastly inferior to a Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone, etc. that cost 1/2 to 1/3 of that. What am I missing here?

  • by goodbyegti on 6/9/14, 9:09 PM

    It's absurdly expensive, even more so the modules. Looking at the BT module, the BLE112 can be purchased for $15 in quantities of 1. So you pay $35 for a small PCB, some pin headers and probably a wrapper around a UART.

  • by johnpmayer on 6/9/14, 8:23 PM

    This is great. I have some small background in real time embedded systems, but I think that 99% of the "internet of things" need not be written in low-level C. I'll probably pick this up...

    ...however, I do hope that they can bring down the price for future models. $100 is a bit steep for a hobby project to control my AC. For now, I understand that the premuim is rewarding the software effort.

  • by rememberlenny on 6/9/14, 8:37 PM

    I won a Tessel at JSConf this year and love it.

    Are there ways to make our own module attachments? The $50 parts seem a bit steep.

  • by pessimizer on 6/10/14, 2:14 PM

    When I think microcontroller, I think < $5. I'm not sure what this is supposed to be for - it's almost as expensive as a gumstix board.

  • by ojanik on 6/10/14, 5:30 AM

    Not enough jQuery!

  • by refrigerator on 6/9/14, 10:37 PM

    How does this compare to http://www.espruino.com/?

  • by batmansbelt on 6/9/14, 8:44 PM

    Espruino is a similar device (without the cool plugins though, so expect to use a soldering iron). Much cheaper too.

  • by ptk921 on 6/9/14, 10:21 PM

    In their code snippet, it seems that position is not defined for the first loop and would throw a ReferenceError.

  • by zwieback on 6/10/14, 1:00 PM

    Really slick looking but way too expensive. Might buy it for $40, tops.

  • by mpnordland on 6/10/14, 2:53 PM

    Yes, because we really, really need something else to run JS.

  • by eudox on 6/9/14, 8:41 PM

    You win, please, just stop the pain.