$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?
Equally as ill-conceived and/or misdirected as other "language du jour"-specific chips of times past?
Tessel: A microcontroller that runs JavaScript
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Re: Tessel: A microcontroller that runs JavaScript
#12$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?
Lower barrier of entry for people interested in playing around with hardware development. No breadboards and wires, only pluggable modules. Javascript instead of C.
Re: Tessel: A microcontroller that runs JavaScript
#13It'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.
Re: Tessel: A microcontroller that runs JavaScript
#14Actually, a microcontroller that runs Lua. They released the source for the JavaScript to Lua compiler today https://github.com/tessel/colony-compiler
Re: Tessel: A microcontroller that runs JavaScript
#15Device 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.
Re: Tessel: A microcontroller that runs JavaScript
#16Relevant: https://xkcd.com/801
Re: Tessel: A microcontroller that runs JavaScript
#17This 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.
You don't have to write in low-level C. You can write in high level C++, which is vastly preferable to javascript! Or hell, why not write in Lua! It's what this apparently transpiles to, and is much nicer.
The only reason javascript became popular is because it was the only option on the web. Why does that mean we would want to use it when we have better options?
Re: Tessel: A microcontroller that runs JavaScript
#18This 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.
Beaglebone is cheaper and already runs a version of node.js that has extensions to do digital/analog I/O
Re: Tessel: A microcontroller that runs JavaScript
#19$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?
Lower barrier of entry for people interested in playing around with hardware development. No breadboards and wires, only pluggable modules. Javascript instead of C.
No Linux, which can be an advantage or a disadvantage depending on whom you talk to.
Re: Tessel: A microcontroller that runs JavaScript
#20This 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.
You don't have to write in low-level C. You can write in high level C++, which is vastly preferable to javascript! Or hell, why not write in Lua! It's what this apparently transpiles to, and is much nicer. The only reason javascript became popular is because it was the only option on the web. Why does that mean we would want to use it when we have better options?
> You can write in high level C++, which is vastly preferable to javascript!
First, C++ compilers are not available everywhere. Second, C++ compilers do not always implement all corners of the language on embedded systems. Third, C++ is better than Javascript? That's going to take some explanation.
> Or hell, why not write in Lua!
Lua has it's own share of "Wat". 1-based indexing when a non-trivial amount of your stuff needs to interoperate with C is a big one. In addition, Lua is nicely configurable--read, "Every Lua implements a different set of modules."
> The only reason javascript became popular is because it was the only option on the web.
It's popular to hate on Javascript, but Javascript isn't that bad. Go back and take a look at Javascript in the Netscape 2.0 and Netscape 3.0 timeframe. It's a fairly straightforward, minimal language.
Now, all that having been said, this isn't exactly impressive. A 180MHz ARM with 32MB of flash and 32MB of RAM is not a small processor. With that level of power, there are lots of options.
If this were running on an 50MHz M0 with 256K flash and 16K RAM, it would be impressive.