Blog

May

29

2014

Cylon.js At JSConf 2014

by Ron Evans

We had just enough time to recharge a few batteries from MakerFaire 2014, when we packed up Team Cylon.js and headed to JSConf 2014 in sunny Florida. JSConf is one of the centers of innovation (and fun!) in the JavaScript world.

Thanks to organizer Chris Williams and the ongoing efforts of the Nodebots team, there is already a well-established tradition of hardware hacking that has been going on. This means lots of cool people ready to take a look at what Cylon.js can offer to the community.

When we arrived for the makerspace setup day, we were astonished to find out that the amazing new NodeRockets project had already been built using Cylon.js, with our framework software controlling the capsule. Amazing! More on this incredibly cool project in a future post.

We gave our talk on Cylon.js the next morning, where we demoed Arduino, Tessel, Beaglebone Black, Sphero, ARDrone, OpenCV, Digispark & Neurosky. That was a lot to pack in!

The activity day was the day after our talk, and attendees were able to build either Nodebots, Nodeboats, Nodecopter, or Noderockets. There were people of every age wandering around, all having a great time hacking on their preferred robotic device. We know of several teams that used Cylon.js. For example, the Nodecopter team that placed second in that competition approached us with great excitment, telling us of their experience.

Thank you very much to the JSConf organizers and staff for having us be a part of the fun. We appreciate it, and look forward to next year.

You can follow along with our ongoing adventures on Twitter at @cylonjs.

CORRECTION: The capsule control software of the rocket was written using Cylon.js. The launcher part was built using Johnny-Five, as was pointed out by Raquel Vélez via Twitter.