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First Impressions 2006 Sep 14:

Wow, this is a slickly packaged kit in a nicely printed and designed slipcase which opens to show a quick start guide printed right on the box, and three SPOTs in their custom fit foam homes. The USB cable, CD and some plastic bits are housed in a compartment in the box lid.

The SPOTs are amazingly small and light, and the plastic housing looks like it would protect them from prety harsh treatment - such as dropping on to the floor. The Hirose DF17 connectors used to stack the boards are fully shrouded for extra ruggedness (they were designed to be used in cell phones, which get dropped frequently). Plus the board stack is bolted together, so it should be pretty bombproof.

Since the SPOTs charge via USB there is no need for a wall wart, or in this case three of them. Yeah! In my T43 docking station it was easy to charge all three SPOTs at the same time.

Installation and firmware upgrade 2006 Sep 14:

First install platform is an IBM T43 notebook with XP Pro and a docking station.

I installed the 082506 version of the CD tools except for NetBeans5 and the NetBeans integration since I will be using Eclipse, my preferred IDE.

Read through all 31 pages of the PDF of installation instructions in "InstallationInstructions.pdf". I already have a JDK and Ant installed so had no need to set those system variables. There's a small missing step in the USB installation after figure 13, in which you need to tell Windows to search the CDROM for the driver.

OK, now I need to upgrade the firmare to 802506 on all three SPOTs. No details about how to do that in the InstallationInstructions.pdf, but an email said to run "ant upgrade", and it would seem obvious to open a command prompt at C:\Program Files\Sun\SunSPOT\sdk-25Aug2006> and there type "ant upgrade" and sure enough a really well-written Ant project just does the Right Thing. I started with the base station (the thinner SPOT with no sensor board) as suggested. On the bottom is a large label stating 082. It upgraded OK, on USB serial port COM10. I needed to reset the SPOT to start the loader communication.

The first free range SPOT (bottom label 084) was not so smooth. Apparently since each SPOT has a unique ID, the installed wants to reinstall the USB driver all over again. This SPOT apparently has some demo code running which cause a Windows installer error 10 "can't start this device" or something similar. Resetting the SPOT didn't help, but unplugging it allowed the installer to successfully finish. OK, now plug the USB cable back in and try "ant upgrade" on this SPOT. It started OK on USB serial port COM11 and completed successfully.

OK, now SPOT #3, free range #2 (bottom label 041). Plug in its USB and again, it wants to run the USB installer all over. This time I could not connect to the SPOT even after resetting it. The start/stop USB tones sound every few seconds. Unplug USB. Terminate upgrade batch file. Replug USB. Restart Ant. Took three tries to get the upgrade to connect and start to load, on USB serial port COM12. This one got mostly completed, then hung here:

     [java] Sun SPOT bootloader (1046-20060825)
     [java] SPOT serial number = 0014.4F01.0000.0130
     [java] About to flash to slot 1
     [java] Writing imageapp47355.bintemp(19463 bytes) to COM12
     [java] ................................................................
     [java] ................................................................
     [java] .........................
     [java] Download operation completed successfully
     [java] Writing Configuration(1079 bytes) to COM12
     [java] .........
     [java] Download operation completed successfully

     [java] Exiting
   [delete] Deleting: C:\Program Files\Sun\SunSPOT\sdk\temp\spot-temp-391189735

-post-deploy:

jar-deploy:

-pre-init:

-init-user:

-init-system:

-do-init:

-post-init:

init:

-override-warning-find-spots:

-main-find-spots:

-do-find-spots:

-pre-run:

-do-run:

-run-debugclient-with-optional-remoteId:

-run-debugclient-with-script-contents:

-run-debugclient:
     [java] Waiting for target to synchronise...
     [java] (please reset SPOT if you don't get a prompt)
     [java] [waiting for reset]

     [java] Sun SPOT bootloader (1046-20060825)
     [java] SPOT serial number = 0014.4F01.0000.0130

     [java] Squawk VM Starting (2006-08-25:10:48)...

Resetting didn't help. Had to unplug USB, kill Ant, replug USB, restart Ant twice to get the upgrade to run all the way through. Finally SPOT #3 upgraded and reported success. Then I noticed a message about running "ant selectbasestation" on the base station SPOT, so I went back to do that on SPOT #1.

That ran without a hitch on [java] SPOT serial number = 0014.4F01.0000.015C which now seems tied to the USB COM10.

Here I deduced that you hold the power button down for a couple of seconds in order to power the SPOTs off.

On to the tutorial "A Short Tour of a Sun SPOT" which explains opening the "Sun roof", the multi-function Control button, and more.

For tonight, left all three SPOTs charging in sleep mode.

SPOT Development Tools:

There's nothing propietary or closed about SPOT development - all you need is a JDK 1.4 or later (I'm using JDK 5.0) and Ant. All the examples use command line execution of the Ant build file. But unless you are a real guru, prepare to have you mind a bit boggled by the cleverness - and complexity - of the Ant files. I tried to trace through one of the demos' Ant hierarchy and finally gave up. It's something I'd like to come back and understand. The builds seem highly portable.

Eclipse Projects:

Since Eclipse is my preferred IDE, it's my intent to create Eclipse projects for all the demos and get them into our own CVS repository, which now resides on a modified Linux Buffalo NAS, thanks to Ben Holt, but I digress. I didn't install the provided NetBeans projects since I don't use (or plan to use) NetBeans.

Benchmarks:

Yep, they are coming, starting with my own attempt at something practical (how many commercial embedded systems run the Towers of Hanoi?).

Credits, thanks and whom to blame:

All the photos here are courtesy of Bruce Boyes - peruse their metadata for a bit more information. SunSPOT, Java, etc are trademarks of Sun Microsystems. Thanks to the great SunSPOT team at Sun Labs (no, not Sun Laboratories) for letting us participate in the alpha and beta programs. And to Radio Paradise for great music to program and write by.

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