Time to Touch Grass: Build a Conversational Plant Monitor with Embedded JS

Nick Hehr

Viam Robotics

This talk is confirmed. The time of the talk will be announced soon.

The recording will be published after editing. Multipass and Full ticket holders have early access.

Get Multipass

Bookmark

Sentry

Promoted

Code breaks, fix it faster

Crashes, slowdowns, regressions in prod. Seer by Sentry unifies traces, replays, errors, profiles to find root causes fast.

Get started

If you've ever built an app, service, or CLI with JavaScript, you're already halfway to building your first hardware project with that same knowledge! In this talk, we'll use standard APIs to program a microcontroller with environmental sensors, audio input / output, and a display to bring new interactivity to your plant life. You'll see how conversational AI services can be integrated through familiar patterns like fetch, streams, and more. At the end, you should have a practical introduction to the embedded JS standard (ECMA-419) and the motivation to finally water those neglected plants.

This talk has been presented at JSNation US 2026, check out the latest edition of this JavaScript Conference.

fun demos

Nick Hehr

Video transcription, chapters and summary will be available later.

Check out more articles and videos

We constantly think of articles and videos that might spark Git people interest / skill us up or help building a stellar career

The Whimsical Potential of JavaScript Frameworks

React Summit US 2023

28 min

The Whimsical Potential of JavaScript Frameworks

Top Content

Josh Comeau

The Joy of React

The speaker discusses the whimsical and detailed work of Stripe, particularly their interactive and dynamic pages. They explain the use of React for building whimsical details and tracking mouse position. The speaker introduces React Spring for smooth animation and React3 Fiber for creating a 3D egg model. They also mention the use of Framer Motion and React server components for animating CSS properties.

design animations fun demos

Emotional & Functional UI Animations in React

React Day Berlin 2022

28 min

Emotional & Functional UI Animations in React

Elizabet Oliveira

Xata

Today's Talk discussed the importance of UI animations in React, both functional and emotional. Examples were given using CSS and Framer Motion, with a focus on user feedback and accessibility. Design guidelines and animation usage were highlighted, as well as the consideration of negative emotions in animations. The Talk also touched on designing 404 error pages and concluded with gratitude to the audience and organizers.

react animations fun demos

JavaScript Haikus: My Adventures in Tiny Coding

JS GameDev Summit 2023

27 min

JavaScript Haikus: My Adventures in Tiny Coding

Frank Force

Game Designer, Software Engineer

This Talk is about writing super tiny JavaScript programs, known as tiny code. It explores the concept of code golf and the use of a live editor for instant feedback. The Talk discusses various ways to share tiny code, including Twitter.net. It also covers creating graphics, games, and sound in a small space. The speaker highlights inspiring tweets and showcases examples of tiny code, including asemic writing. The future of tiny code includes new techniques, better browser support, and AI-assisted programming.

javascript fun demos inspiration

The Hitchiker's Guide to Event Driven Architectures

Node Congress 2025

30 min

The Hitchiker's Guide to Event Driven Architectures

Premium

Julián Duque

Heroku

Today's Talk introduced event-driven architectures with Node.js. The event loop in Node.js enables non-blocking interaction between components. The event emitter class is used to handle events synchronously. Redis and Apache Kafka are popular tools for event handling, with Kafka providing scalability and persistence. Kafka.js is a JavaScript library that supports transactions and compression. Server-sent events are used to send events to the client. A plugin and library are used to convert an event emitter to an async iterator. The client displays emojis and updates the vote count.

case study fun demos

Hacking an e-Reader with React

React Advanced 2023

7 min

Hacking an e-Reader with React

Tiger Oakes

Senior engineer at Microsoft

React for eBooks? Learn how to hack an eReader to display a tea menu. Create images and write e-books using React. Use EPUB format to create chapters and include CSS. Use Pandoc and Dino to simplify the process and make quick updates.

react case study fun demos iot

Real-Time Robot Control From the Browser With WebRTC

JSNation 2025

21 min

Real-Time Robot Control From the Browser With WebRTC

Nick Hehr

Viam Robotics

Nick Hare, developer advocate at Veeam, learned robotics from open source projects. WebRTC facilitates secure machine connections. Implementing WebRTC involves using Stun, ICE candidates, TURN servers, and signaling. Signaling and Remote Procedure Calls are crucial for peer-to-peer communication. Building a proof of concept with Notify involves PubSub messaging and REST API. Establishing WebRTC connections and data channels enables direct messaging. Video streaming and remote control are demonstrated with a webcam connected to a Raspberry Pi. VM robotics development allows building robots and smart machines with cloud support and SDK.

fun demos iot