What’s a Nodebot?

This past weekend, cities around the world celebrated Nodebots day. Hackster.io was proud to sponsor the first Nodebots meetups in Africa — one in Abuja, Nigeria and one in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Hackster Ambassadors also ran Nodebots meetups in Dallas and Seattle.

Nodebots are Javascript controlled robots. Anyone who knows a smattering of Javascript can use it to control Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Intel Edison and many other boards.

As we found from Hackster’s survey, almost 30% of IoT developers feel most comfortable programming in JavaScript. Also, as you’ll see, Nodebots code can often be written in just a few lines.

The typical way to create a nodebot is using Johnny-Five, but you can also use Cylon.js, particle-api.js (for the Particle), or Tessel’s “native” JavaScript. Using Johnny Five, if you want to control a microcontroller via usb serial, you upload Firmata to your microcontroller. If you’re using a board running linux or you want to control via Wifi or bluetooth, you install a plugin. This will map the IO pins on your board and make them controllable via Javascript. The JavaScript program is executed from either a host machine or your linux dev board running Node.js.

Check out the projects below, as well as my presentation (created for the 2015 CascadiaJS conference) for step-by-step instructions:

Here are a few more fantastic resources for getting started with Nodebots:

• Arduino Experimenter’s Guide for NodeJS

• Tessel Projects on Hackster.io

• The Best Nodebot We’ve Seen

Happy hacking!