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This web site is the work of Systronix Inc, a SPOT Beta site.
The official SPOT resource is sunspotworld

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Running Bounce Demo (2006 Sep 23):

OK, a few days later (funny how sometimes necessary work gets in the way of fun work...) Back to the tutorials, the first of which is the ectoplasmic bouncing ball. The firmware upgrade apparently overwrote the demo which was supposed to come loaded. So move to the folder
C:\Program Files\Sun\SunSPOT\Demos\BounceDemo\BounceDemo-OnSPOT
open a command prompt and type
ant deploy
on the two free range SPOTs. 084 loaded up fine. So did 041. I wonder what the base station version of this app does... anyway, load it the same way. Hmm, not such good luck here, I get the error:
C:\Program Files\Sun\SunSPOT\sdk\ant\deploy.xml:51: The MANIFEST.MF file could not be found. This is required for deploying imlets.
So I'm not sure what I can do about that. The demo documentation doesn't mention the use of the base station, but I can look at the code there: and it is there we learn that the Desktop version is intended to run on the desktop (doh!) not the base station. So I'll look at that later.

Meanwhile the bouncing ball demo is pretty cool on a single SPOT. Turn on another SPOT and the ball color of one changes so that the colors are different. You can "join" two SPOTs and pour the balls from one to the other. If the two balls rest in the same location for a couple of seconds, they join. Then you can pour the one ball between the two SPOTs. My kids thought this was cool.

Back to the PC version... was only able to get the Ant build to work in the folder C:\Program Files\Sun\SunSPOT\Demos\BounceDemo\BounceDemo-OnDesktop. When I copy the whole BounceDemo folder to another location, the build fails, can't find org.sunspotworld.demo.SPOTBounce; will look into that later.

But it does build and run in its original folder, and lo and behold - it's a simulated bouncing ball demo on the PC. You can move the SPOT with the mouse and watch the red LED ball bounce between ends of the LED string. Pretty cool.

Now I will be bold and try to link a free range SPOT. Reset one SPOT and it's ball color changes, so the PC uses the base station radio to communicate with the free range SPOT (the base station has no LEDs or sensor board, so lacks the accelerometer). Now press a button under the end of the LED string on the PC simulator and the free range SPOT and yes - they both blink - and join. So I can pour the balls between the free range spot and the PC simulator. Very cool demo.

Air Text Demo (2006 Sep 23):

Copied the Air Text demo folders to my local development area and this demo builds and deploys just as it should from that folder. And it looks pretty nice when running, especially in a dark room. Quoting from the readme: This application uses the linear array of tricolor LEDs on the eDemoboard and "persistence of vision" to display text in thin air when the SPOT is moved back and forth.

Now to create an Eclipse project.
First I ran the Ant build to create the class files and see what output folders are created. Source is in a \src subfolder and output classes are in both a \build subfolder and \j2meclasses subfolder. Not sure why both...

Then created a new Eclipse project, with the option to create from existing source, and browsed to the AirText project root folder. Eclipse had no trouble finding the source, and I chose \build as the output folder. Now we need a Java runtime library to build against.

So, create an Eclipse Classpath Variable:
SUNSPOT_HOME
and give it the value
C:/Program Files/Sun/SunSPOT/sdk-25Aug2006

Now add libraries to the Eclipse project by extending that variable with the \lib folder and jars:
squawk_rt
spotlib_common
transducerlib_rt
Those clear up the build errors in the project. Now try running Ant within Eclipse and select "deploy" as the task.
Wow! Amazing - the deploy task actually builds and works the way it should.

COM11, where are you?

Now I can use Eclipse Package Explorer to poke around in the source code. Change some of the text in AirTextDemo, rebuild and load. This worked as expected for a while then COM11 failed to work to program SPOT 084, with the error "Port COM11 unavailable..." The FAQ suggests running
ant -Dport=COM11 info
but this did not help.
I can still load the same app into SPOT 084 on COM12.

I tried the FAQ-recommended "ant -Dport=COM11 info", then waiting until the access retries, then plugging the (off) SPOT into the USB and resetting it, several times and finally rebooted my notebook. Then tried this process again. The first time it also failed but the second time it succeeded in contacting the SPOT on COM11 and now I can deploy normall. What's really going on here? If this happens again I will check in Device Manager to see if there is a USB serial port error.

Expansion Connector

The SPOT has a 2x10 100-mil expansion connector laid out (just pads, nothing plugged in). 5VDC 100mA max is available on pin 7. For something like a human PIR sensor we need 400 uA at 5V- so this is not a problem.

Aargh, apparently the PDF Hardware Theory of Operation is saved with some options disabled, so for example, I can't add my own bookmarks to the PDF. I can highlight text.

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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