By Guest Blogger Timothy Beneke

At the Java Hub, Java’s flexibility was illustrated through a number of demos and displays. The message was clear: any Java developer can program in Java Embedded, so get your Raspberry Pi, connect it to your favorite device, and have fun with the Internet of Things (IoT). Aldebaran Robotics presented the friendly, 2-foot-tall, high-tech Nao robot, which can be used to enhance social awareness among autistic children. It danced, gave fist bumps, and seemed to drink in the attention. Across the room, a 3-D printer performed its magic, creating clones of Duke using JavaFX and Oracle Java Embedded.

James Gosling’s Wave Glider
A Liquid Robotics Wave Glider, with software developed by James Gosling, was also on display. Wave Glider, which looks like a souped-up yellow surfboard, is an autonomous water and solar-powered platform that transmits oceanic information such as water temperature and chemistry, wind speed, living organisms, and ocean bottom topography using Java SE Embedded applications for defense, oil and gas, and commercial and science customers.

Wave Glider has two parts, the surfboard-like “float” loaded with solar panels to recharge lithium-ion batteries—which resides at the ocean’s surface—and the sub, equipped with wings and tethered six meters below.  

Java Capabilities for the Green Power Industry
Alexander Belokrylov, product manager for Java ME Embedded, showed off Java ME capabilities for the green power industry, demonstrating how a Java ME Embedded application can control and monitor energy sources on a bicycle-driven electric generator.

“This is just a regular bicycle that illustrates the Raspberry Pi functionality,” explained Belokrylov. “Here it is connected to a bicycle, but it could also function with an irrigation system or many other things. The key point is that with Java ME and no libraries, we can run a fully autonomous system that connects to the cloud and measures energy usage. This is a small footprint and it can do a lot. We want Java developers to take this power and run with it!”

A Car that Knows You
Gary Collins, principal member of technical staff at Oracle, showed off the Telematics Car Demo from Sunday’s Java Strategy keynote, where a simulated electric car used Java ME Embedded data and JavaFX to aggregate and display temperature, speed, light sensor, crash, and other data. “The functionality enables a car to make adjustments for drivers,” explained Collins. “Suppose you drive this car from a rental agency and come back to rent it again. The agency can access data about you and adjust the car for temperature, seating position, preferred radio stations and many other applications. It’s a car that can learn your preferences and patterns.”


Playing with Java SE Embedded
Across from the car simulator, a row of Raspberry Pis interfaced with cubed light bulbs, Sphero Robotic Balls, XY-Plotters for drawing, and more. Attendees were invited to choose an “if statement” and then tweet, send an SMS message using a motion or light sensor, draw their names with a Java or Oracle logo or picture of Duke, and more. Light bulbs could light up in strange ways; a Sphero Ball could act crazy. It was all in the spirit of play to illustrate that Java SE Embedded offers a wide range of possibilities for developers who want to try out the IoT with Java 8.

Wearables are a subset of the Internet of Things that has gained a lot of attention. Wearables can monitor your infant's heartrate, open your front door, or warn you when someone's trying to hack your enterprise network. From Devoxx UK to Oracle OpenWorld to Devoxx4kids, everyone seems to be doing something with wearables. 

In this video, John McLear introduces the NFC Ring. It can be used to unlock doors, mobile phones, transfer information and link people. The software for developers is open source, so get coding!

If you are coming to JavaOne or Oracle OpenWorld, join us for Dress Code 2.0, a wearables meetup. Put on your best wearables gear and come hang out with the Oracle Applications User Experience team and friends at the OTN Lounge. We'll discuss the finer points of use cases, APIs, integrations, UX design, and fashion and style considerations for wearable tech development. There will be gifts for attendees sporting wearable tech, while supplies last.

What: Dress Code 2.0: A Wearables Meetup

When: Tuesday, 30-September-2014, 4-6 PM

Where: OTN Lounge at Oracle OpenWorld

IoT - Wearable Resources

The IoT Community on Java.net

Wearables in the World of Enterprise Applications? Yep.

The Paradox of Wearable Technologies

Conference: Wearable Sensors and Electronics (Santa Clara, USA)

Devoxx4Kids Workshop for Youth: Wearable tech! (Mountain View, USA)

Nighthacking moves in! Join Stephen Chin as he interviews Java developers attending JavaOne. You will learn from fellow developers about ingenious ways to get your job done with the tools and technologies they use. Those interviews will be live at Java Hub during the whole conference and live streamed online.

The Hackergarten is where developers contribute to JSRs and open source projects. Whether you are a veteran contributor or a beginner, you are invited to participate for as long as you want. You can stay for less than an hour, several hours, a day, or the entire time of the conference. JSR contributors will be onsite to help. Topics include Java EE, Data Grids, Java SE 8 (Lambdas and Date & Time API) and OpenJDK. Java Champion Andres Almiray organizes Hackergarten at many conferences around the world. Check the hackergarten.net for events close to you!

What's that Java and the Internet of Things? Check out what's new with the platform and how it provides a great solution for the Internet of Things. Whether you are working in the industry or just want to do your own DIY projects. Stop by Java IoT Demo Showcase and learn what you can do with Java. The cool keynote demo will be there as well for all 3 days of the conference.

Learn how to use 3D Modeling with JavaFX 3D, Java Embedded, and 3D printing. You will experience the entire process from the modeling interface to the 3D printing of no less than the Duke. Computer scientist Michael Hoffer from the Goethe-Center in Germany will demo his 3D modeling and printing.

The scavenger hunt at the Java Hub will add a twist of fun to the discovery of Java technologies. The Java Hub will be located in the JavaOne Exhibit Hall at Hilton San Francisco Union Square.

Register today with the Early Bird rate to save $400 off the onsite price!  

Oracle Technology Network's (OTN) first Virtual Technology Summit is this week: July 9 and 10. The VTS includes tracks on Database, Middleware, Systems and, of course, Java. In the Java track, titled "Big Trends and Technologies," you will learn how Java lets you mine Big Data, build robust apps with HTML5, JavaScript and Java EE, and expand into the Internet of Things. Experts will present and you’ll be able to chat with them live online. 

The event is FREE, but you need to register!

Java Sessions 

Efficient architectures for creating MapReduce Pipelines 
by Fabiane Nardon, Java Champion and Big Data Expert

JavaScript/HTML5 Rich Clients Using Java EE 7
by Reza Rahman, Java Evangelist and Java EE Expert

How to Become an Embedded Developer
by Angelia Caicedo, Java Evangelist and Java Embedded Expert

At OTN's Virtual Technology Summit we want you to learn how to get the most out of Java. These sessions are real-world and code-heavy.  Don’t miss out on this great opportunity to learn from some of the best minds in the Java community.

Here's the opening paragraph from the new OTN article "A Perfect Match: Java and the Internet of Things:"

"The recent MakerCon Conference, hosted by Oracle, along with the 2014 Maker Faire, made it clear that the Maker Movement—a vital source of hardware innovation—is catching fire and opening up rich possibilities for Java developers. The match between the Maker Movement's ingenious intelligent devices and embedded software technology is central to the development of the connected world, the Internet of Things (IoT), and machine-to-machine (M2M) technology. As embedded devices get cheaper, more powerful, and more connected, and as the Internet of Things grows, Java developers are receiving strong support from Oracle as they face radical new challenges and opportunities. Java is best equipped to serve as a unified standardized platform for the Internet of Things. To that end, a major effort to unify the Java platform is underway—specifically, Java ME with Java SE—to shrink Java SE into the embedded space and smaller devices."

Read the entire article here. 

Thank you to Voltaire Yap for the photo.

This is your last chance to win a JavaOne trip. Submit a project video and code for the IoT Developer Challenge by this Friday, May 30.  12 JavaOne trips will be awarded to 3 professional teams and one student team. Members of two student teams will win laptops and certification training vouchers.

Ask your last minute questions on the coaching form or the Challenge forum. They will be answered promptly. Your project video should explain how your project works. Any common video format such as mp4, avi, mov is fine.

Your project must use Java Embedded - whether it is Java SE Embedded or ME Embedded - with the hardware of your choice, including any devices, boards and IoT technology. The project will be judged based on the project implementation, innovation and business usefulness. More details on the IoT Developer Challenge website 

Just for fun! Here is a video of Vinicius Senger giving a tour of his home lab, and showing his boards and gadgets.