D10: Programming the World with Sun SPOTs

Tuesday, Oct 24, from 11:30 to 12:00
Wednesday, Oct 25, from 10:30 to 11:00
Wednesday, Oct 25, from 16:00 to 16:30
Thursday, Oct 26, from 14:00 to 14:30

The Sun Small Programmable Object Technology, or Sun SPOT, is a battery-powered, wireless computing device for use in sensor and actuator networks that are embedded in the physical world. The Sun SPOT is unusual for several reasons: it runs Java "on the bare metal" (there is no operating system). Furthermore the Java VM running on the SunSPOT, called "Squawk," can run many mutually isolated applications in a single VM, and these applications can be migrated as they run. Thus a user can move a running program over the radio, from one Sun SPOT to another, to achieve network load balancing, to facilitate in-the-field replacement, or any other of a number of novel applications. The SunSPOT is based on an ARM9 processor with an 802.15.4 radio chip. The Sun SPOT software comes with Java libraries that enable control over external devices such as speakers or servo motors. It also comes with several A/D lines, general I/O pins, 8 24-bit RGB LEDs, and on-board sensors including a 3D accelerometer, light detector, and 2 input switches. We will show several different applications of the Sun SPOT, and will demonstrate SPOTWorld, a management tool that enables the user to see what programs are running on their local Sun SPOTs, to pause any application, to exit it, to redeploy the application, or to reprogram the devices using a Java IDE. SPOT World also enables drag and drop of running applications.