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nz.js(con).nodebots

Haere mai, and welcome to the nz.js(con).nodebots workshop.

Thanks to our awesome sponsors at Xero, who you should checkout if you're looking for JavaScript jobs, we have 12 Parrot mini-drones to hack on.

So today we'll be working with drones 🤖!

For the first part of the workshop, you'll be connecting to the drones, using node and JavaScript.

Once you're up and running it's up to you how you control them. Through controllers, phones, pebble watches, leap motions... the sky is the limit.

Thirty minutes before the end of the event, we'll be hosting a drone racing knockout elimination tournament, where you'll be racing your drone around a course, in groups of 4 to find the ultimate node drone racing champion.

There will be prizes for the winners, with spot prizes in the mix, and no doubt drone crashes worthy of tweeting about.

If you're not in to drones, or we've run out of drones to offer, we'll also be running our classic sumo-bot tournament, where you can build a two wheeled sumo-bot, and battle it in a sumo-fighting tournament.

Gear up

There are only 12 drones, so we'll be working in groups to get the job done, so form a group or grab a buddy, then be sure to pick up your drone from the nodebots depot, likely located on the table where everyone is scrambling too.

Once you have your drone, and a few backup batteries, you'll want to make sure you have a lego mini-figure your team relates to, then you're ready to start hacking.

Alternatively, if we're out of drones, then pickup a sparkfun inventors kit and a sumo-bot chassis and head on over to: [link here] for details on how to build it.

Getting friendly with your Drone

Although you can use the Parrot Mini app for for iOS or Android that's not nearly as fun as controlling it with JavaScript!

The npm module you're going to want to use is node-rolling-spider. When you grab your drone we'll tell you the Bluetooth name so that you can use that to connect with.

We'd recommend getting a simple example working first just to get used to how everything connects. There are examples inside the above module in the /eg folder.

What's next? It's up to you!

Good luck 👍🏼

Things to keep in mind

tl;dr; Be careful of other people ;)

  • Don't fly the drones at people or annoy anyone by buzzing them around their heads. Those blades are super sharp
  • Keep the indoor hull on your drone
  • The drones are going to hit the wall or the roof, we know, but please don't do that on purpose
  • Just generally be curteous of other people's space where you can