Duchess SunSPOT
13 January 2009 in announcements by Linda van der Pal
I’ve already mentioned it in my Devoxx ’08 recap, but we decided it deserved a post of it’s own.
Duchess owns a SunSPOT (Sun Small Programmable Object Technology). Aaron Houston gave it to me at Devoxx.
So if you know a cool project to build with them (one set contains three SPOTs) just let me know and if you live close enough you can borrow them to try your project out. (Because sending this to another country is just too expensive.)
I’m still thinking of making a programming environment for kids for them, where you can just drag and drop the different components into an application. But that first requires me to play around with them to find out what they can do.
Duchess is a global network for connecting women in Java technology. Its mission is to promote women in this sector and to provide a platform through which women can connect with each other and get involved in the greater Java community.
SunSPOT – is it some kind of wireless sensor network?
programming enviroment for kids sounds great!
Exactly. If you want to see them in action, Parleys has at least one presentation about them: Sun SPOTs In Action. ( http://www.parleys.com the site where the BeJUG stores all the presentations from Devoxx)
Oops, I forgot, they don’t embed the demos yet. And for some reason the movie isn’t moving either.
Anyway, here: http://www.sunspotworld.com/ you can find more information
Oh you got this sweet little thing? I’m so jealous
A chief developer from sun told me about these sunspots on barcamp munich (it took place at sun’s headquarter in munich).
I both study applied computer sciences [embedded systems] and work also as a java / web developer so I think these spots can really achieve what no java based embedded learning system has done before: making java attractive for embedded. In one programming class we could choose between C and Java to programm a robot. Nearly all students took Java but soon we had to see that with C you had much more possibilies and so we “converted”. Well, have fun with them! I would really appreciate if you share your experience with us!
Where in Germany do you live Nicole? If it isn’t too far, we might arrange something so you can play with them as well. They are for the Duchess group after all.