Exploring the Arduino with NodeJS and Johnny-Five: Patrick Catanzariti

[MUSIC]

Hi everyone, my name is Patrick, and I'm a
web developer from Sydney.

I've recently been looking into using
JavaScript to control devices such as

Arduinos, the Elite Emotion, Ninja Blocks

and hopefully very soon this, Pebble
watch.

Today I'm gonna be going over the

absolute basics of controlling an Arduino
using Node.

We're gonna cover connecting up to a

computer, getting Node to communicate with
the

Arduino, and hopefully, by the very end,
blinking this LED light on and off.

I'll be sticking to absolute basics here,
so we're

not going to be doing anything too
advanced, hopefully.

In future tutorials, I'll go over this and
it gets a little bit more complicated.

But, for this one, we're gonna show you
how to get started.

So, let's do that and get started.

What is an Arduino?

A lot of people have read the name online,
or they've heard it

mentioned, but they've never actually seen
one in action, so this is it.

It's a single board micro-controller
that's

open source which basically means that you

can control electronics using a platform
that anyone can build and tinker with.

The people at Arduino are lovely enough to
have open sourced it, which

means that anybody can make their own
Arduino boards that really want to.

This one here, in particular, is the
Arduino Uno.

It's one of a variety, of different models

that the lovely people at Arduino have
released.

You can have a whole range of components

connected to it, too, like LED light
bulbs, sensors,

and even shields, which are things you
kind of

stack on top of Arduinos to add more
functionality.

This one in particular is a MIDI, shield
which has

the ability for, to play sounds, like a
MIDI Keyboard does.

Node.js is a platform that takes

JavaScripts, a scripting language most
commonly used

for web pages, unless you're writing up
network applications such as web servers.

We'll be using it today, to run a web
server that'll talk to our Aduino.

If you haven't used Node.js before, get
started by

heading over to Node.js.org, which I'm
showing on screen here.

Click that Install button and get it
installed

and running on your computer, so that
you'll

be able to continue and follow along with
the example code that I'll be putting up.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

So why Node.js and Arduinos?

Why link these two technologies together?

Well, one of the strengths of JavaScript
is that there are quite a few APIs

out there, which you can join in different
ways to make ideas come to life.

Want to develop a robot that takes

instructions from your Twitter followers,
or a

coffee machine that makes you a different

style of coffee, depending on the weather
outside?

If you want to add a Leap Motion as an
input

device, or feed in data from your Jawbone
or FitBit fitness products.

The possibilities are going all the time.

And JavaScript is becoming an easy to use
bridge between technologies,

because we've got a whole bunch of APIs
we've got access to.

And what is Johnny-Five?

Johnny-Five, is one of those open APIs
that makes JavaScript such

a valuable language to be developing this
sort of thing in.

It allows you to control your Arduino
using

very similar functions to those that you'd
use

if you were programming it just using the

Arduino platform that comes with the
Arduino itself.

We'll be doing a lot of this stuff in the

tutorial that it's explaining here, so
don't worry too much.

But you can see, there's a lot of cool

things that people have started to make
with it.

Wireless Nodebot Kinnect controlled robot
arm, and LCD Running Man.

So, you know, the possibilities get pretty
exciting.

Okay, to get started we'll need to connect
our, our Arduino to our computer.

So, we'll do this by connecting the USB
port to our Arduino.

It serves as both the power to the
Arduino,

and the way to upload software to our
Arduino.

As you can see, once you plug it in,
you'll

have the on lights flicker on, which is a
good sign.

In this demo today, I'll be doing a really

basic example of turning this LED light on
and off.

I've already got the jumper leads in where
they should be.

So if you need to pause this to be able to
follow along, feel free to

pause it now, and put the jumper leads in,
in the way that I've got them.

Connecting up the Arduino is pretty
simple.

Connect up the green one here, to pin 13
on your Arduino.

Then connect up the red one to the 5 volt
pin.

And finally we connect up the black one,
to the ground pin.

Doesn't really matter about colors, you
can

use whatever color jumper wire you'd like.

Now that that's all done, we're ready to
go into the software part

of the tutorial with what code we've gotta
run, and where to talk to our Arduino.

Node application is extremely simple.

We've only got two files, an index
JavaScript file and a package Jason file.

If you are new to Node the package Jason
file is what we use to provide any details

about the application, and what other Node
modules are required for that application.

So, to start with, I'll go over this
packaged

up Jason file, and show you what's going
on.

So, here we've got what the name of

our application is in this case, Node in
Johnny-Five.

Can name this whatever you'd like, totally
up to you, but keep it all to one word.

It doesn't seem to like spaces.

It'll start complaining at you, so
definitely stick to one word.

We've got a version number.

Once again, you can pretty much use any
version

number you'd like, really, for simple
basic test applications.

I've called it 0.0.1, because really this
application is very,

very early stages and isn't going to be
doing too much.

So, I'm keeping it at a very early
version.

Then the very important thing, which will
definitely prevent

our application working with Arduinos is
our dependency section here.

This is where we say what other modules we
need,

running and in our Node application for
this to work.

So, we only need Johnny-Five, which is the
module I was showing earlier.

And this here is the version.

So, in this case, we want the latest
Johnny-Five version of that module.

Basically, we're doing such simple stuff,
just basic turning

an LED light on and off, not likely to
change.

So, we're gonna assume that, in every
future version of

Johnny-Five, it'll be compatible with what
we're gonna be doing here.

So, there's no need to really be, specific
on which version we're wanting.

Now we'll go on to the index JavaScript
file.

Our index JavaScript file contains all

of the functionality, but the node
application.

So, this pretty much is our note
application

in 19 lines, two of which are Console
logs.

So, very, very small application here.

I'll go through it step by step and

explain what everything is and why it's
there.

Firstly, we've got our five variable.

Our five variable just requires the
Johnny-Five module.

Once again, the reason that we've got it
here as well as in the package Jason file,

is that we're assigning all of the
different objects and functionality.

That we gain from the Johnny-Five module
into this five

variable so we can access it throughout
the node application.

An example of that is our next line here,
which is board.

Our board variable, is creating a new
board

object which is part of the Johnny-Five
module.

So we're looking into the Johnny-Five
object here, that

we've required here, and we're grabbing
the board object.

Which is all the part of the Jonny-Five
module.

We don't have to worry about any of this.

We don't have to really create any of
this.

It's all been there.

Thanks to the geniuses who have come
before us.

Next up, we are declaring a few more
variables that we use later on,

so we are declaring the LED variable, and
we are declaring toggle state variable.

I'll explain these a bit later on.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

To begin, look at this here actually.

This is an important one because this is
what

will come up first, when we run our
application.

It's just a console log saying waiting for
device to connect.

What that means is that, that will come up
first, as soon as the known application

is starts up just to let us know that the
new application is at least running.

But we don't know yet whether our Arduino
has

connected up, and whether we can talk to
it.

What then happens, is, using this baud
variable here that we created.

Which is a Johnny-Five board object.

We say, on ready, which means, when we've
got

the event of ready fired from the board,
which means.

The board's pretty faster, sends any sort
of commands and requests to it.

We run this function right here, and this
function

starts off with a console log saying board
ready.

This will just let us know, if we're
watching the console while

our node application is running, that the
board is ready to receive.

Our request.

It also is a good way to devote whether,
or not the board is connected properly.

You are doing a board.

Next up, we use this LED variable that we
declared earlier, and

we create a new LED, once again part of
the Johnny-Five module.

We're basically just letting it know that
we've got an LED.

At pin 13 which is what we plugged into
earlier.

Then we get to the JavaScript bit which
is, we're setting an interval using the

JavaScript function which many of you
might

be used to if you are JavaScript gurus.

Basically set interval means that we're
gonna use this function here, toggle LED.

Every 200 milliseconds, and you can play
around with this

number if you'd like later on, just to
experiment, and change

how often the LED light gonna toggle on
and off,

but basically we're gonna say, run this
function every 200 milliseconds.

What isn't that function well, the
function here has.

Three lines and one life line which is
just there for user reading.

Basically we use this variable here,
toggle state,

which we set up earlier to be false.

And each time toggle LED runs, will change
the value of

toggle state from true to false or from
false to true.

So, it basically just changes it the
opposite of what it was.

Then, if total state is true, we turn our
LED light on, otherwise turn it off.

So, basically, we keep changing toggle
state on and off, on and off,

in turn, turning our LED light on and off
and on and off.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

You've.

You're following this now and kind of,

picturing the function running in your
head.

If you'll notice there is nothing that
turns off

this LED, so it will theoretically go on
forever continually

turning on and off, on and off until we
either

disconnect our Arduino or we turn off this
node application.

And I'll be showing you how to do that to.

Theoretically, you could also include some
other functionality, in the

error to turn off the, Intel by clearing
Intel if you'd

like to but in this tutorial to keep
things simple,

we're just gonna give it to the basics I'm
showing you.

This is how you can control the Arduino
from Node, and

then you can add as much functionality as
you'd like to.

On top of this and have a bit of fun.

Now that we have those two files up there
and ready to run our Node application, we

do have to make sure those dependencies we
mentioned, are there and available to run.

So, what I've done is I've opened up a
tunnel, and I've gone to

the same folder that we put those two
files in to prove that to you.

I'll just show you there.

So, you've got the index JavaScript file,
and our package JSON file.

So.

How you would usually run a node
application is just Node index.js.

And we're gonna attempt to run it.

And what we see here is that is says,
cannot find Module Johnny-Five.

Which is fair enough.

We've told it in the Index JavaScript
file.

That there's gonna be a node module called
Johnny-Five and it's gone and looked for

it and can't find and it is now very upset
at us for lying to it.

So, we need to get it installed.

To install it you can use an incredible
package manager called MPM.

MPM just runs through your package.jason
file,

and installs any dependencies that you've
got listed.

If you don't have MPM on your machine just
do a

quick Google search for MPM, and install
it on your computer.

It's quite a simple process, so I won't
cover it here.

So basically, once you've got MPM
installed, you type in MPM space install.

And, it will go through looking through
our package Jason file.

It also does a nice bunch of warning us,
saying we

don't have a few of those that we could
have had.

Description I think and a few other ones.

So, basically, it's gone through and
installed

our modules here so we've got all the

Johnny-Five Modules, and all this other
stuff

that it deems necessary to run our
application.

So now, I'm going

to clear this, but before we run our
actual.

Application we're gonna need to set up our
Arduino, so

that it's able to receive communication
from our Arduino application.

To get this communication working between
our Arduino and the computer,

we just need to upload a bit of code to
our Arduino.

Arduino calls these bits of code sketches.

Which you upload and then install onto the
Arduino and then the Arduino knows

what it needs to do, In our case we don't
need the Arduino to do too much.

Most of our functionality is in Node, all
we need to do is install

a bit of code to ensure it understands how
to communicate with the computer.

First off, before we install it, if you
haven't used the Arduino software

before, double check that your serial port
is pointing to the correct USB port.

You might need to do a bit of trial, and
error with

this one if you're not sure which USB port
is the correct one.

But in my case, it was this TTY USB modem.

Do a bit of trial and error to check which
will work

if you are having any issues with
uploading your code to your Arduino.

Definitely check that setting right there.

I've also got the board set up to

be Arduino set up to whichever board
[INAUDIBLE].

Then top load the sketch.

We're going to go to file, examples.

And then you'll have this on yours too

Fermata, we want the standard Fermata,
sketch here, and

this as it says here is a generic protocol

for communicating with micro controls,
from software on computer.

That is convenient, because that's exactly
what we want to do.

We want to communicate from our notes
software

to our micro control, which is our
Arduino.

So, to upload this to our Arduino, make
sure you've

got it plugged into your computer still,
and click upload.

It'll compile the sketch.

It'll upload it onto the Arduino.

And then in a few seconds it should be
done.

There we go.

So, it's done uploading, which mean's
you've now got

the standard Fermata software or a
standard Fermata sketch.

On your Arduino, which means we're ready
now, to move on to the

next very exciting bit of running our Node
code and communicating with that Arduino.

We've got our two files set up.

Our index JavaScript which has all the
code for our Node application.

We've installed all our dependencies,
using MPM.

We've also got our Arduino connected and

running the standard Fermata, sketch code;
which means

it's now ready to accept all commands that
will come to it from our computer.

So, all that's left is to be in our
terminal

and type in Node index.js, and when we run
this,

we've got our, waiting for device to
connect, message along

with a few messages that come from the
Johnny-Five Module.

It's found our serial port, which is the

USB port that we've got the Arduino
connected to.

Your one might be very different to this.

Doesn't really matter.

The main important thing, is that our
console log

that we set up, which said, board ready,
has appeared.

And if you turn to face your LED light,
you'll see that it's now flashing.

Which is lovely.

It means that our code is working.

We're sending our commands to the 13th
pin, telling

it to turn an LED light on and off.

And so it's turning on and off, and on and
off, on and off.

Just as we requested it to.

The only important question is how do you
get it to turn off?

How do you stop it from constantly
running?

This note application.

If we go back to the terminal here, what
you've gotta do is just press Ctrl C and

then Ctrl C again and it'll close the
board and it'll stop that light blinking.

If you timed it correctly, the light'll be
off.

If you time it slightly differently, the
light will stay on.

And that's okay, really.

It's not a big deal.

If you want to completely turn it off, you
can just unplug the

USB from the computer, and it will turn
off all power to your Arduino.

It won't harm it in any way.

It's just a quick way of getting it to.

Stop doing what it was doing that you
really didn't want it to do.

And that, my friends, is how you turn a
LED light on and off, and on and off

in an infinite loop using node Johnny-Five
and Arduino.

If you followed along, you should now have
an

LED light, bending to your node
application as well.

Good work.

This is the basics.

There's a lot more to do from here.

If you've got any questions, or if there's
anything that

I've missed, feel free to get in touch
with me.

My name once again is Patrick Catanzariti.

I am on Twitter at thatpatrickguy or I've
got a website Patcat.me.

So, feel free to get in touch, if you make
anything really cool with Arduinos

following up from this tutorial,
definitely get

in touch as well, we'd love to see.

Thanks for taking the time, to watch, and
I hope you learned something new.

See you.