Blog

Jan

19

2016

Cylon.js Off And Rolling In 2016

by Ron Evans

The new year is here, and we're off and rolling with our first Cylon.js releases of 2016.

There have been lots of exciting new developments in the hardware world, and our awesome contributors and team have been busy making things work for all of you.

Here's the list of this first collection of platform releases of the year.

Platform Updates

cylon-ble Support For Noble 1.3

We've added support in cylon-ble for the new 1.3.0 version of Noble. We've also greatly improved our integration and Noble connection sharing. This means you can more easily connect your Cylon.js programs to Bluetooth LE devices than ever before. Expect lots of cool integrations coming soon.

cylon-ollie is now cylon-sphero-ble

We've renamed the cylon-ollie module to cylon-sphero-ble, and we've also added support for a certain very popular little cinematic robot. Here is a code sample:

var Cylon = require('cylon');

Cylon.robot({
  connections: {
    bluetooth: { adaptor: 'central', uuid: 'cc360e85785e', module: 'cylon-ble'}
  },

  devices: {
    bb8: { driver: 'bb8', module: 'cylon-sphero-ble'}
  },

  work: function(my) {
    my.bb8.color(0x00FFFF);
    my.bb8.roll(60, 0);

    after(3000, function() {
      my.bb8.color(0xFF0000);
      my.bb8.stop();
    });
  }
}).start();

Thank you to our awesome friends at Sphero, and their support of the Sphero.js library.

cylon-audio using MPG123

We've released a new version of cylon-audio that uses the MPG123 library. This means a lot less dependencies, not to mention support for playing multiple sounds at the same time. We've even added a handy loop() function. Check it out at https://github.com/hybridgroup/cylon-audio

var Cylon = require("cylon");

Cylon.robot({
  connections: {
    audio: { adaptor: "audio" }
  },

  devices: {
    sound: { driver: "audio", file: "./audio_samples/audio-sample.mp3" }
  },

  work: function(my) {
    my.sound.loop();
  }
}).start();

cylon-joystick bugfixes

We fixed some bugs in cylon-joystick, and now the Dualshock 4 is fully working, including all the triggers. Fire at will, commander!

cylon-mqtt updates

We've updated cylon-mqtt to the latest version of mqtt.js, as well as adding some additional configuration options to more easily integrate with older MQTT servers.

cylon-intel-iot i2c error handling

We're released a new update to cylon-intel-iot that adds improved error handling for missing or disconnected i2c devices. Thank you @derrell for your contribution that fixes this!

cylon-gpio improved RGB LED support

Thanks to contributor @bencevans, the RGB LED support in cylon-gpio can more easily handle different types of RGB LEDs.

Thanks To Our Users and Contributors

Thank you very much to our users and contributors for their hard work making Cylon.js the best it can be. You could be the next of us, we cordially invite you to please jump right in! We appreciate every contribution.

For the latest news, be sure to follow us on Twitter at @CylonJS.