There are three things that make us huge fans of Austin, Texas here at Bug Labs: the growing tech scene, the endless BBQs, and South by Southwest (or SXSW, as the kids call it). And thanks to everyone in the BUGcommunity, you helped us go to our very first SXSW last year, where we presented a session on hardware mashups and the now-legendary “Pizza Tail.”

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!

Lots of activity buzzing over here at BUG HQ over the next few weeks, as we continue our summer of workshops in the Test Kitchen. We’ll continue throughout August, with several classes aimed at beginner and intermediate-type folks interested in learning about open source, Linux, DIY, hackerism, and much much more. Each event takes place at Bug Labs’ SoHo office (598 Broadway @ Houston – near the 6, B, D, F, V, R and W), so you can also scope all the cool BUG stuff we’re working on behind the scenes.

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.

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.

We’re swinging the BUG HQ doors wide open once again next Wednesday night! Come by and chat with the team, check out the latest in our Test Kitchen, and enjoy tasty refreshments (read: M&Ms) and delightful drinks (read: beer).

Bug Labs Open House (add to calendar)
Wednesday April 29
6:00pm – 9:00pm

598 Broadway (@ Houston) (map)
4th Floor
New York, NY 10012

Hope to see you there!

Last week, Mike Riley at Dr. Dobb’s posted an update on BUG, in which he reviews BUG 1.4 and the BUGvonHippel and BUGsound modules. Overall, a very good piece offering a thorough and objective look at our latest releases, with a few nice photos to boot! This follows Dr. Dobb’s original review of BUG from last August.

Head on over to Dr. Dobbs and take a look, and check out some of our other press while you’re at it!

Thanks to the support of the BUGCommunity, our BUG4Good project proposal has been selected as a top 10 finalist in the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center Mobile Challenge! The initiative, spearheaded by the UC Berkeley HRC and facilitated by NetSquared, is aimed at encouraging individuals and organizations to imagine uses of mobile technologies, such as cell phones, GPS devices and cameras (or a BUGbase and BUGmodules), to assist human rights supporters in collecting, analyzing and disseminating data in the field.

In short, BUG4Good is a BUG application targeted at journalists and researchers in need of a secure mobile device to gather, store and encrypt information such as audio, photos, video, sensor data and more. The challenges faced by many practitioners in the field is not so much the acquisition of this data, but ensuring that it “survives” the various challenges in areas of conflict, such as repressive authorities and the limitations of carrying several devices at once.

Bug Labs will present BUG4Good alongside nine other finalists in “The Soul of the New Machine: Human Rights, Technology, and New Media,” at UC Berkeley on May 4 and 5. There, a panel of judges will select three winners to implement their ideas. Over the next month, we look forward to working with the BUGcommunity to further flesh out this idea, and hopefully we’ll get to see BUG4Good come to fruition on May 5!

Last week, Brian C. posted details to BUGcommunity about BUG R1.4, the new production build of the BUG kernel and filesystem. After what seemed like an eternity to most of us here at BUG HQ, R1.4 is the most significant build to date, addressing many of the functionality issues BUG users have been facing since 1.0. In addition to providing software support for BUGsound, R1.4 contains several major and minor changes to APIs for existing BUGmodules, as well as U-boot and ipkg support.

The kernel and FS are available for download now, as is a new build of Dragonfly, the BUG SDK, v1.2.8.1, which is required for the upgrade.

If you have any questions, feel free to let us know via e-mail (support [a] buglabs [d] net) or on IRC (#buglabs on freenode).

This weekend, Ken, myself and Matt (aka HaveAHennessey on #buglabs) will be in Los Angeles for SCALE 7x, marking the second year Bug Labs attends the SoCal Linux Expo. After a great turnout for Ken and Angel’s session at SCaLE 6x, we’re looking forward updating the crowd in Building open source gadgets with Linux, OSGI and Web Services, taking place on Sunday between 1:30pm and 2:30pm in Concourse A.

If you’re at the show, you can also have a chance to walk away with one of two free BUGbundles! Just look for any of us (we’re wearing BUG shirts) and we’ll give you more information. UPDATE: The Win-a-BUGbundle at SCALE 7x survey is up!

See you there!