Probably the easiest way to get started with JavaScript and embedded devices are Espruino boards. Espruino is “mini” Node.js for embedded devices.

The Espruino project by Gordon Williams was funded in a Kickstarter campaign 2013 and has been continuously improved since.

A simple blinking LED example with Espruino can look as follows. First, you mount an Espruino Pico (which costs around 30USD) with a LED and resistor on a breadboard as is shown above. In this case, I use pin B7 and GND as shown in detail on the hardware pinout.

In contrast to an Arduino Uno or other microcontrollers, you don’t need to setup an IDE to run code on Espruino. On most systems, you don’t even need to install install drivers. You only need a terminal program which comes pre-installed on many computers these days.

Once the hardware is setup, you can connect to the Espruino via USB and a terminal program. A good terminal program for MacOS and Linux is “screen”, while “hterm” is a popular choice on Windows machines.

On MacOS, you can connect to the Espruino with ‘screen’ as follows:

$ screen /dev/cu.usbmodem141 9600

Once you are connected you should a welcome screen similar to the one below.

You now can turn the LED on B7 ON with:

> digitalWrite(B7, HIGH);

And OFF, with:

> digitalWrite(B7, LOW);

You could add a toggle function to the Espruino workspace with:

> var pinStates=[]; > function togglePin(pin) { pinStates[pin] = !pinStates[pin]; digitalWrite(pin, pinStates[pin]); } > togglePin(B7); // ON > togglePin(B7); // OFF

Espruino comes with some more global functions built-in.

For example, you could attach (or “bind”) functions to a certain pin, e.g. with:

> toggleB7 = togglePin.bind(null, B7) > toggleB7();

And to toggle the LED off, use:

> toggleB7();

Besides digital signals, an Espurino makes working with analog signals equally simple with analogWrite. For example, a pulse-width-modulated (PWM) signal can be simply be generated with:

> analogWrite(B7, 0.3, {freq: 1000});

Or, to generate flickering pulses of 10 Herz would be possible with:

> analogWrite(B7, 0.5, {freq: 10})

In contrast to Raspberry Pi and other Linux based devices, Espruino fills the gap for programming battery powered devices with JavaScript.

Boards can be obtained from Espruino.com. Or, if you have some extra time and/or interests in deeper embedded software development, you can flash the JavaScript firmware to other boards, such as STM32 based discovery boards. Other boards are listed here.

New Espruino devices even support connectivity with Wifi or Ethernet.

Thanks to the comment of 0xPIT, I played a bit with Espruino and an ESP8266. The board I had was an ESP8266 12 from Tronixlabs. It has a jumper to enter bootmode (GPIO0).

Now, to flash Esupruino firmware to the ESP8266, I first cloned this Espruino port for ESP8266.

The flashing process of an ESP8266I is nicely explaines in this guide. The main part is getting a copy of “esptool.py”.

Then, flashing the Espruino firmware with:

$ esptool.py --port /dev/cu.usbserial-FT912ZMF write_flash 0x00000 firmware/0x00000.bin 0x10000 firmware/0x10000.bin

And, last flashing a JavaScript script onto the ESP8266 with:

$ esptool.py --port /dev/cu.usbserial-FT912ZMF write_flash 0x60000 ./scripts/hello.js

When you then connect to the board with an FTDI-to-USB cable, you’ll see that the script is executed:

(Note: if you are new to electronics: Breadboards and components will be discussed in my new book Node.js for embedded systems).