SPOTCar by Sun Campus Ambassador
Wednesday Oct 22, 2008
Managing the Sun Campus Ambassador Program is one of the best parts of my job here at Sun. In fact, I'll be devoting much of my blog to all the cool stuff that they do on a day-to-day basis. In case you haven't heard, Campus Ambassadors are student interns that work for Sun and evangelize our Open Source technologies and communities to students at their university. They focus on educating students about the benefits of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and how it is Changing Our World and the particular benefits that it has for students to Change Your World. That's why we say that FOSS will Change (Y) Our World (more on that in a later blog). Since Sun is the FOSS leader, Campus Ambassadors have plenty to talk about.
Today, I'd like to highlight a cool project by Denis Magda, Sun Campus Ambassador from Blagoveschensk State Pedagogical University in Russia. Denis and his fellow students from the Open Source University Meetup (OSUM - pronounced "awesome") at Blagoveschensk State Pedagogical University, just created a remote controlled car using Sun SPOTS. Their car even has headlights that turn on automatically when it gets dark.
Of course, this cool student project is enabled by Sun SPOTs which are Java programmable embedded devices that include an accelerometer, temperature and light sensors, radio transmitter, eight multicolored LEDs, 2 push-button control switches, 5 digital I/O pins, 6 analog inputs, 4 digital outputs, and a rechargeable battery. Since SPOTs are based on Java, they are easily programmed and much more robust than other embedded devices. They are also a great platform for student innovation as exemplied by the SPOTCar created by Denis and his classmates.
Check out Denis' blog for all the details.
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