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TC53

ECMAScript® modules for embedded systems

Upcoming meetings
  • DateNameLocation
  • 20 August 2025TC53 teleconference – August 2025Teleconference
  • 17 September 2025TC53 teleconference – September 2025Teleconference
  • 15 October 2025TC53 teleconference – October 2025Teleconference
  • 19 November 2025TC53 teleconference – November 2025Teleconference
  • 17 December 2025TC53 teleconference – December 2025Teleconference

Activities

TC53 standardizes APIs for embedded systems – including consumer electronics, wearables, industrial IoT, and other sensor-based devices – by applying the ECMAScript® programming language. The success of ECMAScript, commonly known as JavaScript, on the web, cloud servers, and mobile is unquestioned. The language continues to evolve, carrying forward with it an ever-growing ecosystem of skilled developers, necessitating a standard, open ECMAScript-based platform for embedded systems.

TC53 develops ECMA-419 “ECMAScript embedded systems API specification”, a suite of APIs for ECMAScript modules for programs executing on embedded systems. The 1st edition of ECMA-419 was published in June 2021 and has since been updated twice. The standard establishes fundamental patterns for extensible, secure APIs to efficiently support the wide variety of embedded systems. A portable IO layer provides a foundation for higher-level drivers including IO expanders, sensors, real-time clocks, displays, cameras, audio outputs, and audio inputs. It supports common IoT network protocols including HTTP, WebSockets, MQTT, TLS, NTP, and DNS. Persistent storage support includes files, flash memory partitions, key-value pair stores, and over-the-air firmware updates.

TC53 also developed TR/109, a repository of embedded hardware component class definitions for sensors, I/O expanders, displays, and real-time clocks; and TR/110 that provides recommendations and best practices data provenance for scripts on connected sensing devices, with a special focus on accurately time-stamping sensor data.

Security and privacy are critical considerations, particularly with personal devices like wearables. The security of ECMAScript has been carefully studied and continuously improved thanks to its history on the web. Consequently, developing embedded systems in ECMAScript substantially reduces security risks. Additionally, ECMA-419 APIs are designed to work with Hardened JavaScript, a secure subset of ECMAScript that enables high efficiency implementations of fine-grain security policies.

Learning about TC53:

  • presentation on the IO Class Pattern by Donovan Buck, Ecma TC53 member
  • presentation on Resuscitating IoT with ECMAScript®/JavaScript by Peter Hoddie (TC53 Chair) & Lizzie Prader at OpenJS World (23 June 2020). This talk introduces work underway to bring JavaScript to IoT at scale and TC53 proposals for standard IoT APIs in JavaScript.
  • presentations from the TC53 seminar on a modern approach to embedded software (Tokyo, 11 December 2019)
  • introduction to TC53 “Smart wearable systems and sensor-based devices” by Peter Hoddie, Chair of TC53
  • link to TC53’s publicly-viewable work activities on GitHub.