Looking for Chromebook developer - European places to post?

Ken Gracey

Hey all,

We're looking for a developer to help us build a Propeller downloader for Chromebooks. This is a contract position and it could be done by anybody in the world. So far, our domestic search is coming up empty. Perhaps what we're looking for isn't practical or we're not looking in the right place - not sure but we're just not receiving the response we expected. The challenge is that the Propeller has a timed download process whereas some of the other robots connected to Chromebooks are just serial (open drain, is that the right word?).

Do any of you have access, friends, or peers in Eastern Europe who might be familiar with this kind of work? If so, could you post this description in the right places? We've worked with some skilled developers in the past from Poland, Hungary, Estonia, and Ukraine so we know they exist.

Parallax has immediate needs for a Chromebook developer with experience in JavaScript (if Chromebook app/extension) or Java (if created in an Android App), websocket/HTTPS protocols to create a Chrome application for programming the Propeller Microcontroller via USB. This would be similar to our BlocklyPropClient which runs on Mac/Linux/Windows (see our cloud system http://blockly.parallax.com). The challenge is that a timing-dependent (query and response within 50 ms), brief two-way interaction is required to program the Propeller. Knowledge of ChromeOS serial port communication requirements is necessary.

https://www.parallax.com/files/content/docs/Company/JobDescriptions/Chromebook Developer.Contractor.May.2017.pdf

Ken Gracey

David Betz

(deleted after reading the job description)

ostrich

Just to be clear, will this developer have to implement a loader, or just interact with one already written in javascript?

potatohead

Post at Y Combinator Hacker News. Developer centric, read world wide. I have an account, should you need it to post.

Edit, I see you have everything needed here. Shall I just do it?

https://news.ycombinator.com

ostrich

.

DavidZemon

I have some of the skills necessary to apply for this, but not all of them. I'd be willing to learn the rest of them if there was a potential for a full-time (remote) position at the end of a successful contract. Is it worth my time to submit an application or is there zero chance that Parallax is interested in a full-time and remote position?

Ken Gracey

I know many of you can write the necessary code.

The challenge is knowing what the Chromebook can and can't do.

Ken Gracey

Heater.

I'm pretty sure the serial port API for Javascript on the Chrome Book will be the same as that in Chrome Apps.
https://developer.chrome.com/apps/app_serial

It's an interesting little challenge because in JS, especially in the browser, you don't want to block on reading bytes from the serial port. That would hang the GUI. Rather bytes are read and delivered via a call back function in an event driven manner. With that API you cannot just call a "read()" function and have it return bytes when it get's them.

It's perhaps an idea to put the serial port interface into a web worker so that it runs as a separate thread.

I started on a Javascript propeller loader a while back: https://github.com/ZiCog/propeller-loader.js. Mostly untested against a real Prop by me but someone here reported that they had a Prop responding properly.

Sadly that is using the node.js API which is different from the Chrome API. But the same in principle.

Are you guys going to be compiling Spin in Javascript as well?

We have that working here: https://github.com/ZiCog/openspin.js

That uses openspin transpiled to Javascript with Emscripten. It's not a very pretty API but it does work. Sadly real work around here got in the way of making it slick.

The Espruino WebIDE has serial port handling code, https://github.com/espruino/EspruinoTools. With an open source license.