Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by aikah 4388 days ago
Tessel is marketed as a "micro-controller" while the PI as a "micro-computer".

Javascript marketing aside,it would be interesting to know if one can reproduce all Tessel capabilites with a Pi + extensions.

I dont think the "but it runs nodejs modules!" matter that much,if you're going to write for embedded devices,you need to go low level and seek optimizations like crazy.The stuff has like 32MB of ram,you cant do much in javascript+nodejs with that.AFAIK it doesnt even run a javascript engine,but translate the code to LUA.
2 comments
sprobertson 4388 days ago
> it would be interesting to know if one can reproduce all Tessel capabilites with a Pi + extensions.

You can, I've had a Node-on-Pi based home automation system running for a few months now. It looks like Tessel's main advantage is the plug & play nature of their modules.

link
vikramhaer 4388 days ago
That sounds awesome, any details on what kind of setup you have on the Pi for home automation? Would love to try and setup something similar!
link
sprobertson 4387 days ago
It currently consists of a bunch of single purpose modules, some output (light switch and door lock via GPIO, music player, notification sender, etc.), some input (SMS via Twilio, Github webhooks, web interface, etc.), and a central broker. They're all communicating by sending JSON messages over ZeroMQ sockets. Each module connects to and registers with the broker, which keeps track of module health with heartbeats, and routes and schedules commands based on the modules' registered handlers.

It's less complicated than it might sound, I've got some (unorganized, undocumented) code up at https://github.com/spro/drsproboto if you want to take a peek.

link
dkersten 4388 days ago
Tessel is marketed as a "micro-controller" while the PI as a "micro-computer"

Its funny when a micro-controller is more expensive than a micro-computer... :(

link