On November 13th, 2007, we held the second Sun Tech Talk of the semester at Virginia Tech. The topic of discussion centered around, in my opinion, one of the coolest technologies Sun is putting out there:
SunSPOTs.
David Simmons, who worked at Sun Labs, graciously came up to give the Tech Talk, bringing along a couple of other experts on SunSPOTs. Most, if not all, of the people in the audience had never before heard of a "SunSPOT", but the team made sure that they would not soon forget it. They did a great job of presenting an in-depth technical introduction and the crowd soon became much more interactive, eager to learn more.
After the introduction to the device, David and the group began to show off some demos of the device in full use. They started off with the bouncing ball and floating text demos, both of which impressed the audience. These two demos are staples of the SunSPOT for a reason, the simple nature of each one is universally appealing. As the SPOTs were passed around the room during the bouncing ball demo I saw people's jaws literally drop, I saw professors with smiles a mile wide, and I saw students pondering further uses of the device. They were beginning to understand the power of the SPOT.
The demos served as a great interactive introduction to the practical uses of the SPOT. The guys began to present more complex demonstrations of the accelerometers and other various sensors, and the audience stayed with them every step of the way. One of the demos that caught a lot of people's attention was one in which a 3-D SunSPOT on the computer mimicked the orientation of an actual SunSPOT.
By the end of the speech, a large portion of the audience simply did not want to leave. I must admit, even I wanted to see more. People stayed and viewed some code for the demos, amazed at the simplicity in the coding. Most of the demos were done in Netbeans, so it was also a great chance for the guys to show off the power of Netbeans.
One of the things that I noticed in the conversations of those who stayed after the speech was the overall interest expressed in the device's uses. Some of the students were talking about possible research projects and I'm sure professors who saw the presentation would keep it in mind for future projects. Sun, so far, has done a good job in making sure that students and professors have access to SunSPOTs, but we must keep it up. There is most assuredly a place for SunSPOTs in academia, the only problem is that most people do not know that they exist. I would strongly urge any Campus Ambassador out there to do a demo of SunSPOTs to generate interest on your campus. With the power of the SPOT, the possibilities are limitless.