It's been a while since the last update, so quite a lot has happened!
The main, obvious one is Espruino v2.00. There's a link to the announcement here but it's a really big release. We reached version 1v99 in May, and due to a lack of forethought on my part 1v`100 turned out not to be a good choice. Having been forced into v2.00 I then felt I needed to make it a big release, which then meant new features and a lot of testing to make sure everything still worked!
There's loads of new ES6 functionality, some cool Graphics additions, Bluetooth improvements, improved code loading and storage, and even a compression/decompression library. And that's available in all boards (where there's room in Flash), official or not.
I've also tried to really improve the reference as well - adding more code examples and much better linking between topics. Hopefully it'll make a big difference when you need to find something. If you find stuff that still isn't clear or is broken then just let me know and I'll try and fix it.
The Espruino IDE and Command-line tools have had a few recent improvements too - the ability to display images straight from Espruino (via Graphics.dump()) is really cool, but also the CLI can now create Intel HEX files for programming that populate the files in 'Storage' with whatever you want.
The situation with 'Third Party' boards has also really improved lately. We now have other companies producing really cool hardware - 7 boards in total now - that 'just work' with Espruino and that I keep producing up to date builds for. It will hopefully give everyone a lot more flexibility - especially as far as cellular connection goes (4 of the 7 have Cellular or NB-IoT connectivity). It also feels like a really sustainable route for Espruino that works out well for everyone.
This year I also got the chance to work on the Electronic Badges for Nodeconf 2018. I did them last year and the work from that turned into Pixl.js (and the Patreon badge $20 patrons got), and this year I based them on a Pixl.js with some extra sensors, a vibration motor, RGB lights, and an epic RGB backlight using the tweaks Pimoroni made to Pixl's screen for their GFX hat. When I do a new Pixl revision (it'll be a while off I'm afraid) it's definitely getting that backlight too!
There was a pretty good response, but the really good news is that they were using standard Pixl.js firmware, so all the work that went into them has ended up right back into Espruino. If you put 300 broadcasting Espruinos next to each other in a room with 500+ other Bluetooth devices, you can do some really good stress-testing!
I've made sure that I now have a bunch of stock of all Espruino devices (I was out of stock of Pixl.js for a few weeks), but in the process I have discovered that Puck.js's magnetometer is no longer manufactured. That's not an issue this time, but it does mean that when I run out of Puck.js stock some time next year there'll be a new revision that also (finally) contains an accelerometer.
What's coming next? Well for the next few months I'll be trying to avoid making new hardware, and putting some work into the existing Espruino devices - hopefully a smoother experience, some more features, and a proper Starter Kit with documentation.
I've also been putting some work into creating a proper test harness for hardware (one of the 'goals' on Patreon). All being well it'll get implemented long before the goal is hit, and we'll be able to have up to date tests run on each bit of hardware for every single build.
And that's it! I'm sure there's a lot more that I haven't remembered, but hopefully that gives you some idea what's been happening!
There's also another video chat - at 18:00 GMT on 28 November 2018 - it'll be via Google Hangouts again. Please let me know if there's something you'd like to talk about that I might be able to look into beforehand. Also please let me know if that doesn't work for you - I can arrange a second one at a different time.
I'm fully aware I'm well behind on the video chat front - work on Espruino has been sucking up all my time recently and I haven't made the time for Patreon that I should do. Please let me know in the comments if there's anything else I can do to help make up for that - I don't think the video chat is everyone's cup of tea, so what about a group text chat over a 2 hour period? It could be more work-friendly for those where the timing brings the video chat within work hours.
Thanks again!
- Gordon