Espruino Seeks Kickstarter Funding To Help Jump Start Its “JavaScript For Things” Effort

Espruino Seeks Kickstarter Funding To Help Jump Start Its "JavaScript For Things" Effort Aug 30th 2013, 13:22, by Darrell Etherington Arduino is great, but Arduino is also pretty hard to wrap your head around, especially for newbies. The Espruino is “world’s first JavaScript microcontroller for beginners or experts,” and has been offered up to hobbyists and enthusiasts for a couple of years now by Cambridge, UK-based Gordon Williams, but now he’s taking to Kickstarter to make it even easier to use. The Kickstarter project is designed to help Williams take his open source hardware board and get his Source Code cleaned, accessible and ready for Open Source release. Williams says via his Espruino project page that another goal of the Kickstarter is to make it possible to ship boards pre-installed with Espruino software, so that users can just order one and get started with coding immediately. The concept of a “JavaScript for Things” is amazing for home hardware hackers, since it considerably simplifies the process of making devices behave the way you want them to. Williams uses the blinking light example to compare the amount and complexity of code required for both an Espruino-based board and an Arduino one. the JavaScript method is not only familiar to people who’ve done some web development, but it’s much easier to modify and extend, whereas Arduino often requires a lot of rework to accomplish even similar things. Williams is a software developer with experience working for Altera, Microsoft, Nokia Collbaora and more, and he now heads up his own company, which makes the Morphyre 3D music visualizer. Hey’s a Cambridge computing grad and an avid at-home DIY gadget enthusiast, whose passion led to the creation of the Espruino as a way to help others enjoy similar hobbies via events-based programming. The plan is for these to ship to backers (who can pre-order a board starting at £19) beginning in January 2014. Williams has experience making the hardware already, and a very detailed production plan in place to meet that target. Other kits include low power wireless radios, multicolour LED lights and more for higher pledge amounts.