[Embedlets-dev] Re: Is/Are Embedlets alive?

[Ted K. <tk...@ya...>]

Bruce wrote:

> I'm slow on the uptake, apparently. I only recently wondered why I hadn't 
> heard anything interesting from the Embedlet group, went to SourceForge and 
> there have been no new postings since April.

I wouldn't say dead but the project definitely went dormant after we hit a
brick wall trying to decide how to solve the plug-and-play peripheral problem.
Also, we have not heard from the main architect in a while (Andrzej, are you
still out there? :-)


At that time a lot of posts were submitted which were dedicated to the idea of
plug and play sensors and actuators and this was tied in with Brill's Cork
library.  The place where we hit a wall with this was on trying to decide what
the protocols and standards should be for tagging the sensors and communicating
with them.

After letting this sit for a while what eventually happened (which I do not
think most of the people on the list are aware of yet) is that Sun started
their JDDAC community (http://jddac.dev.java.net) about 5 months ago based
around the new IEEE 1451 Plug-and-play transducer standard and this standard
pretty much solves all of the problems we were discussing.



> We're revising the TILT400 schematics and putting the Embedlet project URL 
> on them, at the Embedlet connector, but this may be moot if the group has 
> gone dormant.
>  
> TStik and TILT400 are starting to catch on - there has been a nice increase 
> in orders in the last 90 days or so. TILT400 has the Embedlet connector - 
> added in specifically to support the efforts of this group.

At this point I do not think it is safe to put the Embedlet name at the
connector and as to whether or not you leave the connector itself on the board
is a judgment call.

Ultimately I was the person who pushed for a buffered I2C connector because I
think that it provides an enormous amount of flexibility.  In my mind it could
provide the plug and play capability that 1-Wire does at significantly
increased speeds (especially when used with muvium devices).

What comes to mind now is that the connector would be useful for plugging 1451
devices into because that was the kind of capability we were shooting for
originally.



> So I'm just wondering what the status of the group and project is.

This is a good question.  The Embedlets code base works and now that the JDDAC
project has some Java code that implements various parts of the new 1451
standard, perhaps it is a good time to move development forward again?


Ted


		
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