Pretty much anything in the O'Reilly spin-off Make: series is like catnip to us Linux cats, and the new book Making Things Smart is no exception. The book is subtitled Easy Embedded ARM Programming For Transforming Everyday Objects Into Intelligent Machines and is authored by Gordon H. Williams.

The book is Williams' tool for teaching readers the fundamentals of the powerful ARM microcontroller by walking beginners and experienced users alike through easily assembled projects composed of inexpensive, hardware-store parts.

In rebellion to the many current ARM programming books that take a bland, textbook-ish approach with focus on complex, beginner-unfriendly languages—think C or ARM Assembler—Making Things Smart utilizes Espruino (JavaScript for Hardware) to flatten the learning curve.