October 2007 Archives

Many of you saw the video on our website featuring executives from IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Texas Instruments talking about the importance of Sentilla's software. We featured Rod Smith, IBM's VP of Emerging Technologies and an IBM Fellow. IBM has been involved in pervasive computing for a number of years, and even had a pervasive computing division for some time. There are a number of documents that were collected that describe pervasive computing, the vision and applications involved in putting computers in all of the items around us.

The link below includes a number of great articles from IBM. Although many are based on using mobile phones as the interface, a few also talk about the need to integrate intelligence directly into the real world. Check it out.

From the description:
Projecting this trend into the future, we envision an explosion of interconnected "smart devices" — from watches to cars — that can make our lives easier and more productive. Our work investigates what forms these devices might take, what new functions they might perform, and ways to pack more computing ability into smaller spaces.

http://domino.watson.ibm.com/comm/wwwr_thinkresearch.nsf/pages/pervasive.html

Thank you to everyone that sent in requests to become Sentilla Beta customers. We received an overwhelming response and our crew in sales and marketing are processing those emails and website submissions as we speak. If you have not yet submitted a request to be part of the Beta program and would like to try out our Java platform for building pervasive applications, please fill out the form at www.sentilla.com/sentilladevkit.html. Expect to hear from us soon about Beta. We will be setting up some online events to introduce Sentilla's Java platform to those interested in the Beta program.

In the mean time, Sentilla has contributed the documentation for our end-of-life products to the TinyOS Documentation Project. The project uses a Wiki that the community can edit and update. You can access the community at docs.tinyos.net/index.php/Boomerang.

We are working to get Boomerang contributed to the TinyOS source tree. We encourage those interested in Boomerang to take an active role in its development, and we feel that TinyOS is the best home for this code base. More details on this after we complete the process of contributing code to the repository.

We have posted documents for the Tmote product line on our End of Life page. You can find datasheets, quick start guides, and brochures. If there are other documents that you need, please post requests in the comments!

There has been some confusion surrounding our change to Sentilla on the various mailing lists. Let me clarify a few items so that we are all on the same page.

We at Sentilla (formerly Moteiv) are extremely excited about the use of Java technology in our products. We expect that there will be a tremendous amount of innovation in applications and services that are built with Java technology.

Why Java? There's a lot of reasons. Most students are now learning Java at their universities rather than C or C++. There's also over 6 million Java developers out there today, who can now use, develop, deploy, and manage small computers that some refer to as "motes". Opening pervasive technology to the masses, including professional service organizations, VARs, integrators, and even classrooms and research labs where Java software has already been adopted, is tremendously exciting. We hope that all customers of Moteiv's previous products will consider Sentilla as a great alternative to the embedded, low-level systems of the past.

About our hardware products: Please note that Sentilla is not going to completely stop making pervasive computers (or "motes"), and we are not exiting the market -- rather we are providing an alternative based on open standards and familiar interfaces. We're moving the market for pervasive computing forward by making the software easy and familiar. As of February 1, 2008, all of our new pervasive computers will now come with Sentilla Point -- our Java runtime, application frameworks, networking, and APIs -- pre-loaded. As such, we're excited that everyone in this community will have the ability to use Java software to build applications. If you'd like to get a "bare" mote with only embedded support (such as any of the numerous embedded operating systems like Contiki, TinyOS, SOS, or Mantis), those are still available too until January 31, 2008. All of Sentilla's new products that are coming in 2008 are backwards compatible with Tmote Sky and Tmote Mini, so you can remove Sentilla Point and load your embedded operating system of choice.

With a full software platform for development, deployment, integration, and management, our customers -- both academic and commercial -- now have the necessary infrastructure to quickly build intelligence into embedded systems. No longer do you need to install cygwin, configure gcc packages, learn a new language, or hack embedded code. You can now use all the tools you know and love to write Java applications -- including Eclipse and soon NetBeans.

As for details on the technical capabilities provided by our software platform, I'll be writing up a blog post later in the week that addresses a number of the questions raised in emails, on mailing lists, and through phone calls.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us here at Sentilla. Our transformation to a software business and a Java product is an overall win, and we're committed to working with our loyal customers so that their business, research, and work are not interrupted.

Best,
-Joe

Joe Polastre // co-founder and CTO // joe@sentilla.com
Sentilla Corporation // 201 Marshall St // Redwood City, CA 94063

After 24 months in the making, I'm extremely excited about the launch of Sentilla.  Over the years since we founded Moteiv in 2003 (which is now, officially, Sentilla), we have interacted with over 1,000 customers in over 40 countries.  All of these customers shared the same desire -- to push their businesses further and further towards the edge, interacting with the real world.  In order to realize those great ideas, we knew that we had to make it easy for customers to build applications quickly.

Enter Java.  For years, Cory, Rob, and I (Sentilla's co-founders) were told that Java technology was simply not feasible on a "mote" -- a 16-bit microcontroller with only a few kilobytes of RAM and a low power wireless radio.  Luckily, we didn't listen to them, and 24 months later, we have a full Java environment allowing customers to develop, deploy, integrate and manage pervasive computing applications.

Pervasive computing is all about making the real world smart.  Instead of treating devices as dumb sensors with a network attached to it, we saw small embedded computers.  Over the last 30 years, computers have revolutionized our lives, from servers to laptops to cell phones.  Now computers are revolutionizing our world, integrated into everything around us that we rarely even notice.  Most people don't even realize that over 10 billion (with a 'b') microcontrollers are shipped each year, an order of magnitude more than cell phones.

To sum up, we're extremely excited about leading this new wave of pervasive computing.  We can now build applications almost instantaneously that took months, if not years, before.  And to top it all off, we have content that we never had before.  So here's to beer coasters with pervasive computers, automatically telling the bartender when I need another drink.  What ideas do you have?

Some logistical items: Sentilla is now more community based, and we'll be releasing more and more community features to allow people to interact, share ideas and code, and create applications.  We've also started by enabling comments in our blog, so feel free to post away.

For those of you that are customers of Moteiv's Tmote hardware line, we do have information about how we are phasing out those products.  To best serve you, please view of our end-of-life notice.