[TriLUG] OT: 1/22 - IEEE-embedded meeting: Sun SPOT

[Alan Porter]

The IEEE embedded systems group is having a presentation that
might be of interest to LUG members.  They don't run Linux, but
they are pretty neat toys.

Alan

http://www.ieee-embedded.org

1/22 meeting - SUN SPOT
6:00pm - 8:00pm
MCNC, Cornwallis Road in RTP/Durham

On Monday January 22, 2007 David Simmons will present Project Sun SPOT
(Sun; Small Programmable Object Technology). This is a snapshot of
ongoing research in Sun Microsystems Laboratories. Based on Sun's
experience with Java and the KVM and its use in cell phones, they
thought that applying Java to an embedded Sensor Networks Platform
would be an intriguing are for further work. In November of 2004, Sun
Labs started project Sun SPOT to build sensor hardware and to adapt a
small, flexible Java Virtual Machine to that platform.

Sun created a platform that greatly simplifies development and
experimentation with small wireless devices by basing the Sun SPOT
platform on Java technology-top to bottom, hardware and software.
This has made it easier to write code for small wireless transducers,
sensors, and other consumer electronics devices. Developers can write
a program in Java, load it on a device, run it, and debug it with
standard Java IDEs. Unlike other embedded systems, SunSPOT developers
are able to use industry standard Java development tools such as
Netbeans or Eclipse. The SunSPOT team is also introducing SPOTWorld,
which is a single tool for programming, configuring, managing and
monitoring SPOT devices. SPOTWorld addresses the issues of
programming and managing hundreds of devices spread out over a large
area. The Sun SPOT team has also made it possible to add strong
security without compromising the limited memory and processing
capabilities of small devices. Sun Labs' ECC implementations power a
small-footprint, secure Web server stack (including HTTP and SSL), so
you can monitor and control them securely via a Web browser.

David's talk will address ALL of these issues in more detail. He will
also show demos of a wide array of sensors adapted to the Sun SPOT
platform, and demonstrate the actual development and deployment of a
Sun SPOT application.