Seeing BUGs in the classroom puts a huge smile on my face.  One of our whole reasons for existing is to make technology more accessible and easy-to-use.  Getting feedback from schools and students using BUGs to do real-world, useful things is invaluable.  And as we’re learning, this audience is great a telling us what they think.  We couldn’t be happier working with them.

The University of Valparaiso joins a growing list of top universities using the BUG platform for pedagogical and other innovative purposes.  We wholeheartedly encourage this direction and offer discounts to students and educational organizations to help spur it on.  Please let us know if you are interested in using BUGs in an educational setting and we’ll do our best to support you.  We’ve been working on programs now for over a year so we have a good feel for what’s working and what is less optimal.  We’d be happy to share it all.  Contact Alicia Gibb here for more info.

Today, I am happy to say, we’re announcing the availability of BUGbase WiFi.  In addition to integrated WiFi *and* Bluetooth, BUGbase WiFi is RoHS and CE compliant, allowing us to ship BUG to the 29 countries in the European Union. Other improvements include a friction-fit docking connector and improved power management, along with a few other under-the-hood enhancements. If you currently own a BUGbase, we haven’t forgotten about you – we’ll be releasing a special BUGWiFi module in the coming weeks. As you’d expect from us here at Bug, all of our modules are compatible with either base.

We’re especially thrilled to begin shipping internationally, given the great reception we’ve received from Europe since day one. In traveling to events like FOSDEM and meeting with customers in Italy, France and other EU nations, I’ve noticed the European market has a terrific appreciation for open source approaches and community-driven innovation models.  So it’s safe to say, we expect to see many interesting new BUG-powered applications in the near future.   In addition, our team is working hard getting BUG ready for the 200 or so other countries in the world.

We will have some more exciting product and partnership news to share in the coming weeks so please stay tuned.  In the meantime, go download Dragonfly (our free SDK), play around with the environment and if you like what you see, head on over to our store!

But one thing that gets a little lost in the excitement is the fact that Accenture is now a proponent of the Open Source Hardware (OSH) movement.   This doesn’t mean that they will suddenly create and publish a slew of new hardware designs.  That will happen gradually, and will focus on the verticals they identify in the article.  More importantly, it signals an acceptance of a nascent business model that could help point the way for future OSH projects.  It’s similar in form and spirit to Red Hat’s revenue model in that it’s based on services not product per se.

Bug Labs makes money selling hardware and complimentary services that help our customers get the most out of their BUG investment.  Where we see higher, longer term value though is in offering core services around the software stack that makes it all work together.  These services, ranging from OS level to application level certification and verification offerings, come in the form of annual subscriptions; very much like Red Hat.   This makes sense to many companies building new devices because they don’t want to be in the business of managing the unlying software infrastruture.  And if Red Hat can do $600+ M (2008) in revenue using that model, then I feel relatively safe in saying it works.  Of course, Bug Labs is not Red Hat.  We have a long way to go to earn that level of distinction, but then it’s always good to have a goal

This business model works for us because the devices we are building all require complex OSs and frameworks.  It doesn’t really work for less complex, non-network-connected approaches.   But we feel that, over time, as Moore’s Law continues to work its magic, it will become common to have sophisticated software foundations in cheaper and cheaper devices, with the attendant necessity to maintain them.

Open source hardware is a huge economic category.  It’s not as simple to grok as open source software.  As a result, finding a one-size-fits-all business model is impossible.  But as this example suggests, when companies start using OSH to address real business problems, solutions can be found.

So we thought we’d have a go at it again. For this year’s SXSW 2010 Interactive Festival, we submitted the proposal “You Developed the Content. Now Build the Hardware,” where we plan to present actual cases of entrepreneurs and enterprises using open source hardware to create the next batch of game-changing devices. With Amazon’s Kindle, TechCrunch’s upcoming Crunchpad, and a growing list of software and content developers jumping into the world of consumer electronics, we plan to show you (yes, you) how to build and sell your own hardware devices cheaper, quicker and better than the big companies.

But we need your vote to make this session happen. So:

1. Register on SXSW’s PanelPicker
2. Vote for our session and help spread the word
3. Party with the BUG team in Austin next March
4. ????
5. Profit

It’s a win-win situation all around, and you can help make it happen. Voting ends September 4, but it’ll take you less than a minute to get your vote and spread the word. Looking forward to seeing you in Austin!

Below’s a glimpse of what’s going on for the next two weeks. Check out each event page for more details:

Soft Circuits Class – July 22nd (tomorrow)
Learn soft circuits with conductive thread! We’ll be stitching up electrical designs in fabric. This class will be a beginner course, the core concepts of a circuit will be covered. No previous experience required.

Urban Farming Workshop – July 26th (Sunday)
Lee Mandell from Boswyck Farms will be teaching an inexpensive method for growing fruits and vegetables hydroponicallly indoors. This class will include a quick history of hydroponics along with an overview of some of the many hydroponic methods, and it’s appropriateness for different crops. Then Lee will lead the class in constructing their own water reservoirs and associated parts to maintain their own gardens at home.

Linux InstallFest – August 1st (Saturday)
Put Linux on your laptop! We will have a few distros of Linux to choose from. Be prepared by bringing your backed-up laptop. We will also have Ubuntu on a USB stick specially for your netbook. There will also be a demonstration of Poky Linux on a BUG from Bug Labs.

Hope to see you here!

A couple weeks ago at JavaOne 2009, we announced the upcoming availability of BUGbee, our 802.15.4 low-power radio module. Today, we’re excited to announce that you can now purchase BUGbee from our store for $79 and get it delivered to you by next week.

What can you do with BUGbee, you ask? Well, BUGbee is a low-power, low-bandwidth radio module. It operates using the 802.15.4 protocol, which transmits data in smaller packets than 802.11 devices. BUGbee also offers the same, if not greater, transmission range of wi-fi (theoretically up to 1,200 meters). And since it consumes far less power than wi-fi, it’s perfect for battery-powered sensor applications.

Furthermore, as over 64,000 devices can reside on the same BUGbee grid (unlike 32 with wi-fi), you can build larger-scale intelligent grid networks with BUGbee. This makes it suitable for home automation, energy monitoring, industrial machine-to-machine (M2M), supply-chain logistics and more.

At JavaOne, we demonstrated BUGbeeChat, a peer-to-peer IM client that lets two BUGs chat with each other without a 802.11 wi-fi connection. We also have several applications currently in development by our customers that we look forward to sharing with you soon. For now, hop into the forums or IRC (#buglabs on irc.freenode.net) and let us know what you plan on building with your BUGbee.

The BUG team got plenty of inquiries from the attendees, and it seems like more and more software folks want to be hardware folks these days. That got us thinking of starting our very own meetup very soon, kinda like a BUG User Group (B.U.G. anyone?). Anyway, it was a great time and we hope to have the Java Meetup back again very soon.

This week, we’re at JavaOne 2009 in San Francisco, showcasing some of our new enterprise solutions. Yesterday, we unveiled some exciting news that we’d like to share with you here.

To date, we’ve seen some great applications built by individual developers, and BUG has proved to be a great platform for building customized devices for personal needs. At JavaOne, we’re showing our more “serious” side, demonstrating several new enterprise-focused applications and modules, some by our partners and customers, including:

• a mobile services platform for next generation field applications, from fleet management (e.g. vehicle tracking, in-car telemetry) to telemedicine (e.g. remote health monitoring),
• a messaging and middleware application developed by Antenna Software,
• a document management and analysis platform developed by startup LivingAnalytics,
• BUGnose (pictured above next to BUGview), an upcoming olfactory sensor module, and the first 3rd party BUGmodule, developed by JLM Innovation of Germany,
• BUGbee, our 802.15.4 low-power radio for PANs and sensor networks, will be available in our online store within the next two weeks.

Also, we will be shipping internationally by the end of Q3′09 to select European and Asian countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and more, with a full list to be announced within the next month.

Finally, we’re excited to announce that we’re a partner in Axeda’s Smartlink Platform of wireless devices, as one of the preferred edge devices to power the company’s intelligent asset management solutions. More details of this announcement can be found here.

This is just the first wave of news we have for our enterprise solutions, and we have more planned over the coming weeks. And we’ll also have more details of the above applications posted soon over in BUGcommunity, but for more details of yesterday’s news, check out the release here.

Over the past few weeks, we here at Bug Labs have been preparing for JavaOne 2009, the world’s annual gathering of Java developers taking place this week in San Francisco. JavaOne makes for a perfect venue to showcase BUG – a modular device development platform that anyone with Java chops can use to bring their ideas to life. And with over 6.5 million Java developers worldwide, that’s a lot of possibilities.

We have a series of announcements lined up for the show which will shine some light on what we’ve been up to. But you can track all the updates via this blog and our Twitter stream. And if you’re in San Francisco this week, stop by the Bug Labs booth (#708) or the Java Utopia area to say hey, or attend our Birds of a Feather session on Thursday at 8:30 in the Esplanade, rooms 307-310. Just look for anyone in the red or white BUG shirts.

I want to also mention how humbling it was to sit in the audience and watch presentations by people who have devoted their lives to the cause of human rights.  From doing forensic investigations at mass grave sites, to working with war refugees in Africa, to providing comfort and aid to war stricken families in Burma, I was blown away by the devotion and compassion these brave men and women bring to their jobs.  They made me want to work hard to ensure that the technology we’re building is useful to them.  From the discussions we had I’m convinced we can help.

Congrats again to the winners and thank you Berkeley HRC for giving me the chance to meet such amazing people.