Arduino yun vs tessel vs espruino

Question

I'm interested in programming microcontrollers with javascript / nodejs.

I first got an Arduino uno and programmed it with cylonjs. I made a simple robot but soon realised that this wouldn't work out since I needed to always have the Arduino connected to the computer for the node program to run. The board would also need to have Wi-Fi so I could control it from the web.

Someone recommended that I use Arduino yun since it has all those things. This seemed perfect, however I found out there are other boards that also provide the same thing, and work with js.

• Arduino yun
• Beaglebone
• nanode
• Electric Imp
• Intel Edison
• Tessel
• Particle
• espruino

There are also a lot more (like the raspberry pi, but I don't need or want a whole operating system )

After looking at all the boards that would work I realised that the tessel and espruino are especially made for javascript.

So my question is, what are the main differences between those boards, especially the Arduino Yun, Tessel, and espruino.

Thanks!

Edit: the tessel modules look really expensive and I would probably not use them. - just the normal pins.

Answer 1

I'd recommend Espruino or Tessel over Yun; they're much more built for Node/JS.

Espruino and Tessel have two different philosophies – Espruino is built to be very low power; Tessel is built for Wifi connectivity and modularity. They have different built in features, so it really depends what you're trying to make.

They (somewhat) reflect the people behind them; Tessel was imagined by web developers, and so has a very Heroku/Node-like workflow. Espruino has a more traditional hardware feel, and is an exploration in how small Javascript can be made.

Both are open source hardware and software, and both are very easy to get started with.

I'd recommend checking out both getting started experiences to get a feel for each:

Espruino http://www.espruino.com/Quick+Start Tessel http://tessel.github.io/t2-start/

Answer 2

For me Espruino seems very flexible. It runs on many Chip-sets, ranging from cheap ST discovery boards to ESP8266 Wifi boards (Adafruit Huzzah).

It has lots of examples and running the examples is a button press away.(The examples have a little button that imports the example code into the Chrome IDE app)

Currently I am playing around with it on this nifty little board : https://www.tindie.com/products/onandoffables/arminarm/ It plugs into a Raspberry Pi and exposes a few option to play with ARM chips. (Espruino, Lua, Maple, CMSIS)

The Espruino board is also very low powered and can run on a few uA's.

Tessel - Does a lot of the same stuff as the Espruino. Has more memory,is faster,has WIFI. Can do other languages like Python and RUST. Is more like a Raspberry Pi. It has modules where Espruino uses standard components for sensors (like Arduino).

Arduino Yun - Its an Arduino + Wifi module. ESP8266 does the same thing for much cheaper. The Yun Wifi Module actually is a small Wifi router with an OS running on it(OpenWRT from what I can recall).