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Interview
Sun SPOTs Go Open Source
An interview with Arshan Poursohi
2/13/2008
Recently Sun Microsystems announced that it would open source both the hardware and operating system for Sun SPOTs, its sensor networking product based on Java technology. CT talked with Arshan Poursohi, a staff researcher in the Sun SPOTs lab on Sun's Menlo Park, CA campus to find out how higher education institutions can incorporate Sun SPOTs in research and instruction.
What is Sun's kit for Sun SPOTs?It's a development kit for wireless sensor development based on Java. The premise is, there are lots of Java developers out there, and a lot of interesting applications in the wireless sensor network space. And bringing those two together will really ramp up both developers that are doing wireless and embedded research, as well as giving Java developers another avenue of attack for what they're coding.
What are some examples of how Sun SPOTs are already being used?
You can put them into buildings to monitor, for instance, temperature conditions so you can fine tune the air conditioning and heating. You can deploy them on volcanoes and see what the eruption conditions are in a flow from top to bottom -- so you can see what happens as it's beginning to erupt. Robotics is another example. The embedded computer is so small and powerful enough now, that it can do a lot of really diverse tasks. So, if you can dream it up, you can probably attack it with a Sun SPOT.
Sun made recent announcements about open sourcing both hardware and software for Sun SPOTs. Could you tell me a bit about those announcements and what the opportunities might be for research and instruction in higher education?
Here in the labs we've been working with higher education collaborators for ages. And when they can't open the code entirely there's always a little bit of a barrier because there's that bit of stuff that they can't change and must depend on the company for. The announcements were that we're open sourcing the entire stack -- the Sun SPOT libraries, as well as the Squawk JVM, and the hardware. So now everything is open to the developer. University professors and students who are considering basing either curriculum or research around this device now have access to everything.
If you want to make modifications to the Java VM, you are able to do that. If you want to modify the hardware a little bit so that it fits your application better, or if you are just writing an application and you want to see what's going on under the covers, all of that's available now.
So the operating system and hardware are both now open?
Operating system, hardware, everything-open. The whole thing.
Can you explain a little bit about Sun's initiative in higher education with the Sun SPOTs?
Ever since the Sun SPOTs project started, we've noticed, through interns, word of mouth, or professors that we work with regularly, that there's been a great amount of interest in Sun SPOTs.
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