Beta Follow-up
Monday Mar 03, 2008
So I sent the following email message to all the Beta Testers that had signed up by Saturday, but there has been a veritable flood of interest in this Beta, and so I thought I'd post this here for all to see.
As I said, I'll also try to post some more tutorial-like information on using SPOT Manager v3.0, Solarium, and SDK soon.
Dear Beta Participants,
First and foremost, thank you for signing up for the Beta of the Software-only capable SDK and the new (v3.0) release of SPOT Manager. We greatly appreciate your interest in Sun SPOTs, and your willingness to be our test subjects.
I hope that you have all had a chance to download and install the new version, and have begun working with the SDK and the Emulator.
I may have gotten ahead of myself a little bit in all the excitement of releasing the Beta and may not have provided as much information as I could have on what was available, what to do, etc.
First, as you may have already noticed, Sun SPOT Manager has scanned your system for the required elements of ant and a suitable JDK prior to installing anything. Second, you probably noticed several (3 actually) choices of SDKs to install: v1.0 (Green), v2.0 (Orange), and v3.0 (Purple). v4.0 (Blue) is still under development, and I'll let you know when a beta of *that* is available, of course. For the software-only (Emulator) you will want to install v3.0 (Purple) as that is the *only* version of the SDK which contains the Emulator. If you have Sun SPOT Hardware, you needn't be as worried about that, but you'll still want the latest version of the software.
Once you have installed the Software, you will probably want the Demos. The Demos are color-coded like the SDKs, but installing them is a tad more complicated. The *most* recent versions are, of course, available through the java.net projects. But if you just want the Demos that ship with the SDK, you will need to make sure that the right Demos are installed. In order to get the 'Purple' Demos, follow these simple steps:
1) Switch to the 'Preferences' tab of the SPOT Manager application
2) Select the 'Beta Update Center'
3) change the 'Timeout' value -- any change will do!
4) Switch back to the SDK Tab, and the Demos button should be activated. Click that, and the Demos will be installed.
Finally, you will want to start the Solarium Application from where you can launch 'virtual' SPOTs and interact with them easily. Just switch to the 'Solarium' Tab and click the Solarium button. Yes, it's that easy. You can then start any number of virtual SPOTs and interact with them.
Finally, you may want to switch to the 'Docs' tab and read the Emulator documents and the Solarium Documents (which are still listed as 'SPOT World' for now).
Finally, keep an eye on my blog as I will be posting some more information about the emulator, and working with virtual SPOTs in the near future.
Once again, thanks for your willingness to work with us on this Beta, and we hope that you enjoy the Sun SPOT Software. Let us hear from you if you have any trouble, or even if you don't!
So, I hope that helps somewhat in getting things rolling for you! Keep checking back for updates on tutorials, etc.
[ When I said "we", officer, I was referring to myself, the four young ladies, and, of course, the goat. ]
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