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Sun Spots Future Developers With Bare-Metal JVM


By Edward J. Correia
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April 1, 2006 —  “Look, ma, no operating system!” Such could be the cry of young developers of the future if the Java vision of Sun Microsystems comes to fruition. Striding toward that vision, the company in May is set to release a hardware and software development kit for Small Programmable Object Technology (SPOT), tools released in March that include a CLDC JVM that runs directly on the processor.

The development kit will include two palm-sized Sun SPOT probes and a base station, all battery-operated. According to specifications published by Sun, the three devices each will include an ARM9 processor, 512KB RAM, 4MB flash, 2.4 GHz 802.15.4 radio with integrated antenna, 3.6V lithium-ion battery and a USB interface.

The stand-alone probes add a three-axis accelerometer (for measuring multidirectional acceleration), temperature and light sensors, eight tricolor LEDs, six analog inputs and eight general-purpose I/O pins (for controlling relays, stepper motors, servos and the like). Probes wired to a PC via USB also can act as a base station.

Software included with the kit will be the NetBeans 5.0 development environment and the Squawk Java Virtual Machine, a flash-resident CLDC 1.1 JVM developed at Sun Labs under the direction of Glenn Edens, a Sun senior vice president. “This will allow Java, as it did with cell phones and the Internet, to play a pivotal role in enabling the coming wave of sensor-driven computing,” he said in a statement announcing the Sun SPOT release.

Sun researchers began working on wireless sensor networks in 2003. During the first year, according to reports published by Sun, they began to realize that more powerful and easily programmable processors were needed. The Sun SPOT project, which was first announced in April 2004, included the hardware development and its integration with the small, flexible Squawk JVM also being developed in the labs.

Applications expected to emerge as a result of the technology include wireless sensor networks for climate control in buildings, quality control in manufacturing plants, patient safety in health-care settings, tracking fertilizer runoff for farmers, and countless military applications.

Obstacles to adoption, according to Sun, include data security within the resource constraints of the probes, processor limitations for signal analysis and control, and the absence of tools to efficiently program, monitor and manage the devices.

The kit is expected to cost about US$499 and is being marketed initially to researchers, hobbyists and academia. A Web site dedicated to the technology is at www.sunspotworld.com.




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