Having little to no experience with Node.js, anxiety struck as I walked through the massive revolving doors at 1500 Broadway into this months Nodebots event at the about.com headquarters in Times Square. My nerves immediately subsided (with the help of some beer and pizza) as I found out that most of the people who had attended this event were in the same boat as I was, but there were still hardcore Nodebot veterans in the building.
Nodebots was great because anyone (with javascript experience) can get a good handle on understanding the in's and out's of how their code can be used to control these little "bots". What I loved most about this event was the amount of help that I received from the developers who were hosting the event. A couple of the pioneers of the API 'Johnny-Five' were present, including Rick Waldron. They handed out Arduino hardware to anyone that didn't bring their own to work with.
The 'Johnny-Five' API is actually what made Node accessible with the Arduino hardware. I began to realize how easy it was to use and understand 'Johnny-Five' as I read through their app on GitHub. With some help, I was able to get a potentiometer to control how fast an LED light was able to blink as well as control the rotation of a servo solely with javascript. As amazing as my accomplishments seem to be, they came nowhere close to what was going on at the table behind me. Some guy was working on wirelessly controlling some sort of robot on wheels from his laptop with Node, and thats not even the full potential of what the 'Johnny-Five' API can do with this sort of hardware.
As the night came to an end Rick Waldron sat next to me and began to explain what sort of things his team is working on. My jaw dropped when he showed me a youtube video of one of his partners presenting a spider-like-robot that can be controlled by just waving your hand over some sort of sensor. The sensor picks up all sorts of hand gestures that manipulate its movement in some sort of way.
This months Nodebots was most definitely a success. Everybody who attended learned something new and more importantly had a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to seeing when the next Nodebot is going to go down.
As the night came to an end Rick Waldron sat next to me and began to explain what sort of things his team is working on. My jaw dropped when he showed me a youtube video of one of his partners presenting a spider-like-robot that can be controlled by just waving your hand over some sort of sensor. The sensor picks up all sorts of hand gestures that manipulate its movement in some sort of way.
This months Nodebots was most definitely a success. Everybody who attended learned something new and more importantly had a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to seeing when the next Nodebot is going to go down.
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