Blog

Apr

08

2015

Cylon.js 1.0.0 is here!

by Andrew Stewart and Ron Evans

It's been a long time coming, but version 1.0.0 of Cylon.js is finally here!

We're thrilled to share this with all of you.

If you want a "media-friendly" version of the story, here is our press release about it: http://cylonjs.com/news/cylon-1.0-release

This release signifies we think the core APIs in Cylon are stable, and we don't anticipate any more breaking changes in the near future.

In addition, we have made a number of important changes:

Removed Single Connection/Device Syntax

The outdated, deprecated method of specifying a single device or connection when creating a robot has now been fully removed.

Attempting to instantiate a robot in this manner will now throw an error.

Bound Functions By Default

Methods passed to the robot initializer are now auto-bound:

Cylon.robot({
  connections: {
    arduino: { adaptor: "firmata", port: "/dev/ttyACM0" }
  },

  devices: {
    led: { driver: "led", pin: 13 }
  },

  blink: function() {
    this.led.toggle();
  },

  work: function(my) {
    every((1).second(), my.blink);
  }
}).start();

Basestar#respond

A new method has been added to the base class for Drivers and Adaptors, #respond.

This method provides a simple interface for device/adaptor methods to handle both callbacks and events.

It's signature is #respond(event, callback, err, ...vals).

The error/values are provided to the callback directly. If err is a non-null value, the "error" event is emitted with err provided as a value. Otherwise, the provided event is emitted, with vals passed as arguments.

Example usage:

Driver.prototype.write = function(pin, val, callback) {
  doAsyncThing(pin, val, function(err, data) {
    this.respond("write", callback, err, data);
  }.bind(this));
}

Debug mode flag

This release also adds a quicker way to run your robots in debug logging mode - just add the --debug flag to your command when running it.

As always, you can check out the compare view on GitHub for more details.

Contributors

We'd really like to extend a massive thanks to all the contributors who've helped get Cylon.js to this point. We couldn't have done this without you.

• Adrian Zankich
• Andrew Nesbitt
• Andrew Stewart
• Avner Cohen
• Caleb Oller
• Chris Boette
• Chris Matthieu
• Daniel Fischer
• Daniel Lamb
• Daniel Portales
• Edgar Silva
• Evoliofly
• Felix
• Fábio Franco Uechi
• Guido García
• James Brown
• Janaka Abeywardhana
• Jarrod Ribble
• Jasson Cascante
• Jasson Qasqant
• Javier Cervantes
• Jay Wengrow
• Jérôme Loï
• Julian Cheal
• Justin Smith
• Kraig Walker
• Loren West
• Luis Felipe Perez
• Mario Ricalde
• Matheus Mariano
• Michael Harris
• Mike Skalnik
• Nathan Zankich
• Rafael Magana
• Reid Carlberg
• Ron Evans
• Sonic Radish
• Theron Boerner
• Tomasz Szymanski
• Wojtek Erbetowski
• Xixe Bombilla
• chrisfp
• gorhgorh
• peterainbow

Thanks Again

We can't overstate how thankful we are to our users and contributors.

For more updates, be sure to follow us on Twitter at @CylonJS.