Project Sun SPOT (Sun; Small Programmable Object Technology) is a snapshot of ongoing research in Oracle Labs (formerly Sun Labs). Established in 1990, Sun Labs, with locations in California and Massachusetts, was the applied research and advanced development arm of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Now part of Oracle Corporation, Sun Labs, rebranded as Oracle Labs is one of the ways Oracle invests in the future -- the Labs is responsible for many of the technology advancements and inventions that have made Oracle a technology powerhouse.

In 2003 researchers at Sun Labs began working on Wireless Sensor Networks. Over the course of the first year of research, we found that we wanted more powerful sensor devices that were easier to program. We felt that our progress was limited by the lack of useful tools and by inflexible hardware designs. Based on our experience with Java and with the KVM (both of which were invented in Sun Labs) and its use in cell phones, we thought that applying Java to development of the platform we envisioned would help us get past some of these limits.

In November of 2004, Sun Labs started project Sun SPOT to build our own sensor hardware and to adapt a small, flexible Java Virtual Machine (Project Squawk) to the sensor platform. Within days of getting our first hardware running, our eager researchers had developed several interesting application and we were off and running.

A year and a few successful collaborations later, we realized that we have many more ideas for things to do with Sun SPOTs than we have time or resources to pursue. So we decided that the best way to see these and other ideas develop is to share the technology with you. Please, have fun, be inspired and enjoy.