The Espruino Book "Making Things Smart" is out now!

Hi!

There's now a book on Espruino available called Making Things Smart.

I've been working on this for over a year now, and it's great to see it out there! It was released in the US on August 1st, and will be available elsewhere (including the UK) from August 31st.

The book contains a selection of projects to do with Espruino. There's a pretty big section showing you how to make things with the Espruino WiFi and Puck.js, but the majority of the book is about building really simple hardware, and then making it do interesting things with Espruino.

It starts off with motors and stepper motors, and then goes on to show you how to make a really low-resolution televison (John Logie Baird style) using nothing more than an old PC fan and a LED. There's information on making a simple robot, low resolution digital camera, radial plotter and printer, and finally, a slightly more complicated but pretty usable XY plotter.

If you're interested you can get it here - it's published by Make: and is available as a physical book as well as an eBook.

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Great, just ordered one @ Amazon DE

Ordered. Looks great! Thanks for all your amazing contributions to the field Gordon.

Excellent! Where's the eBook option though?

Wow, thanks!

Actually now I look I can't find the eBook either! I've just asked and I'll let you know when I find the answer :)

Ok, there is now an eBook available here - however the price still seems pretty high to me - they're looking into it!

Also, if you're on Safari (the O'Reilly thing, not the browser), it seems you can view the book online here: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/06369200­31246.do

Finally someone on Twitter pointed out that there's no description of the chapters, so I just added that to the GitHub code repo: https://github.com/espruino/making-thing­s-smart/blob/master/README.md

Thanks Gordon - price seemed OK to me - I have some idea of how much work goes into these things. Will look forward to the read!

25 New from $20.34 15 Used from $22.99

How can there be used books already?

Digital copy - careful owner - only downloaded once by an old lady.

I know - even Make: were surprised about this, especially to see new and old books available when we knew there weren't any available of any type. I think it's just people with bots trying to get a bit more custom - it'll definitely make me think twice about ordering books from some of the other sellers in the future :)

Just recognized this info, and ordered about 30 secs later
There are still 13 available, after I ordered mine.

I find ebay more flexible, I used to shop from ebay, Could you sale this item on ebay, i am interested in this book.
Thanks @Gordon
One more thing could you sale espruino original as a kit with separate modules, it will be more fun doing JS programing,
let me know thanks @Gordon

I imagine the books will turn up on eBay eventually. I'm afraid that's not something I can offer at the moment though (as I'm not physically posting out books myself).

could you sale espruino original as a kit with separate modules

What do you mean? Like a Getting Started kit, with LCD/LEDs/etc?

@Robin is starting to offer some some things like that, with https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072LRT9C9 - although they're quite simple at the moment.

I may try and offer something in the future (I have done some kits for conferences in the past) but it'll be a way off. It gets quite expensive trying to keep enough stock of everything, and LCDs especially are hard to find a good reliable source of.

I just sifted through the chapters on safaribooks and I like educational approach a lot.

Thanks @Gordon!

Waiting for mine to arrive from Amazon, 31st Aug :-)

If anyone's interested in getting an eBook copy of the book, Make: have started a 'Humble Bundle' promotion for the next week: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/elect­ronics-programming-make-books

Basically pay what you want and get lots of eBooks (but it's over $15 if you want to get Making Things Smart). Plus a proportion of the sales goes to charity as well - I don't know what proportion, but apparently over previous years $500k has been donated, so it can't be that bad!

got it, like it
there are some new ideas
between my ears, .....

@JumJum, usually, it's begins 'there'... the good, the bad, and the ugly... as other sayings illustrate. In your case: ...only the first one - the good - hits!

Got it thanks !

The book is great, I got it from Amazon but only in ebook right now. Also Gordon I would to read about how, why and the technical details of how you make Espruino. I am sure I could take a SC on complilers but I think your success story would be more interesting.

Thanks!

I guess if enough people find it interesting I could try and do something like that as a series of blog posts or youtube videos? like a super quick into to how compilers/interpreters work and how to make them, and some of the interesting things Espruino does to squeeze the most out of the available memory?

That would be awesome! Maybe new ideas and solutions surface from this.

Lots of folks check YouTube and Podcast to get there info, the community can ways use some more sources for micros, Gordon it's ok with you I would like to submit your name to the Embedded FM podcast http://embedded.fm as a possible guest if you have not already been on the show.

@PrimeTime0416 this is the first I'd heard of embedded.fm - yes, totally - I'd be really interested in appearing on there. I'd be happy to get in touch myself if you think that'll help.

100% I have seen your lectures on YouTube and I think you will make a great guest, plus you have an educational and compelling story. Maybe have a listen to a few episodes first to get a feel for the show, embedded.fm has a decent following and noticable guest but I am surprised your pr person wasn't hawking this angle.