Nodecopter - quadcopter control in Javascript

For a long time there is a whole community of amateur developers who are involved in the programming of flying robots. They organize periodic conferences and gatherings. But what is the peculiarity of this community, you ask? the fact is that quadrocopters are programmed in Javascript on the NodeJS platform. Among developers, the already well-known ArDrone Parrot is very popular, which has been repeatedly covered on the pages of Habr.



Details under the cut.


To start writing under ArDrone Parrot right now, just install NodeJS and download the special ar-drone module from the github:

github.com/felixge/node-ar-drone

You can also do this via NPM:

$ npm install ar-drone

The following few lines of javascript code make the quadcopter rotate 180 degrees clockwise, perform a turn, and land:

var arDrone = require('ar-drone');
var client = arDrone.createClient();
client.takeoff();
client
  .after(5000, function() {
    this.clockwise(0.5);
  })
  .after(3000, function() {
    this.animate('flipLeft', 15);
  })
  .after(1000, function() {
    this.stop();
    this.land();
  });

Full documentation can be found at nodecopter.com/guides

Open SDK for ArDrone Parrot
projects.ardrone.org/projects/show/ardrone-api

There is support for streaming video and data from quadrocopter sensors. An impressive community has formed around the project. The guys roam around America and hold events for coding for feasts for AR drone.

You can even connect Arduino to your ArDrone. In Javascript, it would look like this:

var serialport = require('node-serialport')
var sp = new serialport.SerialPort("/dev/ttyO3", { 
  parser: serialport.parsers.raw,
  baud: 9600
})
sp.on('data', function(chunk) {
  console.log(chunk.toString('hex'), chunk.toString(), chunk)
})

Details about working with Arduino in the context of Nodecopter can be found here:
gist.github.com/maxogden/4152815

The official community website - nodecopter.com
On it you can find news on development and conferences. By the way, on May 30, 2013 the next conference is being prepared in the format of “Summer of Drones”. It will be held in Helsinki. “Summer of Drones” is a large-scale conference whose goal is to bring together like-minded people under one roof and demonstrate the peaceful application of technological progress. Quadcopters can be used not only as spy robots, and the organizers prove this from conference to conference, carrying out all kinds of competitions.