Sun Spots!
A while ago, our boss Paul ordered some ‘Sun Spots’, Tiny little programmable devices running java off a 180Mhz ARM Processor with 4M of flash memory.
They arrived today! and are damn cool! None of us have had a real play with them yet, but it seems you get two full sun spots in one pack, with one ‘base station’ which is basically a sunspot without the top layer of sensors (just the USB port, processor, memory and radio equipment) and can be used to wirelessly control / interact with the other two.
They use IEEE 802.15.4 (2.4Ghz Unlicensed band) as the radio comms link.
The default sunspot’s come built with:
* 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
* 4 high current output pins
I have been looking for a way to control the server’s I am going to have to put into the universities data center for my final project next year (As I pretty much need to simulate a whole enterprise network using VM’s) and so these will be perfect!
As I can:
Monitor the server temperature
Have some basic tamper detection via the accelerometer
Use the general purpose IO pins for power on/off/reset of the servers
I also wonder whether I could use the I/O pins to create a serial port via the sunspot for console…
And hopefully all wirelessly with the ‘base station’ on a management host on the other side of the room!
Coding java suddenly became fun :P
//Matt
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Hmm, 2.4Ghz unlicensed band? Bleh, there’s already enough rubbish running on that. They should have just stuck a bluetooth chip in there with a basic serial profile. Would have made it awesome as a simple datalogger to use along with your phone on bikerides. Especially if you combined the data with a secondary GPS receiver.
Are these things buyable by mere mortals?
http://www.sunspotworld.com seems to be their home on the web, with turotials and news etc.
Looks like you can buy them as long as you are in the United States, Canada, the European Union, or Russia.
http://www.sunspotworld.com/products/
.. I hope there is some student discount ;P
Btw, bluetooth uses the 2.4Ghz band also… or was your point that if they were going to use that band, then they may as well have used a popular specification?
Thinking about it, bluetooth would have made it much more handy like you say, limitless idea’s for a tiny sensor / input/output device that could be controlled by a phone.
Would also make a pretty good bomb trigger.. but these days I probably shouldn’t make jokes that that.. or the black helicopters will be parking on my lawn ;P
//Matt