Sun SPOT development kits are now available for sale from the Sun SPOT website (U.S. sales only currently, US$550.00).

A Sun SPOT development kit includes:

• Two Sun SPOT devices with demo sensor boards
• Base station Sun SPOT to connect to your development machine
• Software development tools and cables

A Sun SPOT device is built by stacking a Sun SPOT processor board with a sensor board and battery. The Sun SPOT processor board features:

• 180 MHz 32 bit ARM920T core - 512K RAM/4M Flash
• 2.4 GHz IEEE 802.15.4 radio with integrated antenna
• USB interface
• 3.7V rechargeable 720 mAh lithium-ion battery
• 32 uA deep sleep mode

The general purpose sensor board features:

• 2G/6G 3-axis accelerometer
• Temperature sensor
• Light sensor
• 8 tri-color LEDs
• 6 analog inputs
• 2 momentary switches
• 5 general purpose I/O pins and 4 high current output pins

Sun SPOT software is the Squawk Virtual Machine:

• Fully capable J2METM CLDC 1.1 Java VM with OS functionality
• VM executes directly out of flash memory
• Device drivers written in the JavaTM programming language
• Automatic battery management

Developer Tools:

• Use standard IDEs, e.g. NetBeansTM IDE, to create Java code
• Integrates with J2SETM applications
• Sun SPOT wired via USB to a computer acts as a base-station

Now that you've got one, what do you do with it?

Project Sun SPOT (Small Programmable Object Technology) has been working on wireless sensor networks. The Sun Labs built sensor hardware and adapted a small, flexible JavaTM Virtual Machine (JVMTM) (Project Squawk) to the sensor platform. (Note: the JVM is a Sun trademark.)

They are being used in a portable EKG machine to monitor patient's hearts; the project is being done at the University of California, San Diego. See the forum on the Sun SPOTS website to learn more about this project and other applications. Members can add projects and participate in discussions.

Vipul Gupta lists some more applications of Sun SPOTS in his weblog. [...read more...]

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