Raspberry Pi Pico and JavaScript

A match made in heaven?

If you rewind back to one of my first posts on this blog (although I had been "doing" stuff way before then, I just didn't record it), I was setting up a Raspberry Pi 1 to run nodeJS - basically "server-side JavaScript", it was more than capable and was very useful and handy thing to do.

Well, the Raspberry Pi 5 has just been announced to be available from 23rd October - yes, I've got an order in for a 4GB and 8GB version - well, the specs for the RPi5 are just mindblowing.  It is like having a full blown desktop replacement machine in a small form factor, you don't need to "buy a PC" anymore, a £50 RPi v5 will do all you need it to do... if indeed you want to use it as a "PC replacement".

Personally, I'm more of the, it should be an IoT hardware integration device and not something you use for playing the latest triple-A games on or complaining about "dropped frames" from streaming YouTube videos - it should be a maker-device.... anyway, who cares about what I think.

What I AM impressed with is the Raspberry Pi PICO - I've been playing around with that for a year or so and have written quite a few things in MicroPython and C code - have even plugged it in and used it with a Robo PICO to control a K9 "robot", using CircuitPython....

There was always a niggle that I am somehow compromising by using Python - I'm not a fan of Python, it's a dirty word/language, it does the job, I just don't like it.  Maybe it is because it reminds me of Perl and has connections back to early 2000s picking up other peoples Perl scipts of mess and having to mentally debug them line by line to work them out and find out they were doing things they shouldn't, maybe.

Anyway, it looks like someone knew or also had this issue.  JavaScript is now contained within the 264K (yes, K, not MB or GB, K) within the Pico.  That is awesome!

Welcome to Kaluma:

check it out HERE

Here's the QUICK START:

Now, time to dust off those ideas / things I wanted to previously do, but just didn't want to use Python for.... oh, it's going to be a fun next 3 months, I can tell

Click HERE for the Getting-Started steps.  Right, where is a "spare" Pico W?

Okay, here's a small procrastination reveal...

I wrote some Python code a while back for the K9 Robo Pico that used the ultrasonic sensors to detect objects and to control the wheel motors to do some self-driving; well, I wrote the code in modules, I did the motor drivers first and then (after finding out I had 2 broken sensor modules and getting some new ones), I wrote the sensor code.... I've had the K9 sitting on my desk and being moved around regularly - I did plug it in last weekend with the "intention" of merging the 2 modules of code together.  It didn't happen.

Why not?

Well, as I said, I just cannot bring myself to write Python, unless I "really" have to.  It still irks me.  It's like deciding to "fix my car", but instead of using a proper welder and the right tools, I've just got some duct tape and will be wrapping it up & standing back and saying, "yeah, great job, that'll hold"... and then wonder why at 100mph bits of the car are flying off, okay, bit extreme example but that's what I think.

So...now, however.... I can give Kaluma a test run and see what it can do on the K9.  Am looking forward to the weekend now!

.....

lovely nice JavaScript (oh shut up whining about the fact you are a lazy programmer and cannot write code that deals with adding numbers and strings together = the usual lazy boy comment about using JavaScript - go and play with traffic, maybe a self-driving car that is not running JavaScript will run you over)

.....

oh and here's a quick link to the example github repo:

https://github.com/kaluma-project/examples