Just over two years ago when we first announced BUG, our goal was to shake up the consumer electronics landscape by releasing something new, something groundbreaking, something needed – the first modular, open source device platform.   A few months and sleepless nights later, we began shipping our first units, albeit with some changes to the original plan. We would only ship domestically to the U.S. (due to certification requirements) and without WiFi in the BUGbase (due to open source licensing issues).  Since then we have heard, loud and clear, that we needed to address these shortfalls.  And we’ve worked hard to make it happen.

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!

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.

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!

Three years ago we received our first round of funding from Union Square Ventures, and a small group of private investors.  While it was not the “official” start of Bug Labs, it’s as good a date as any other since I don’t really recall anything more official.  So we use the date as our birthday.  Seeing the first investment hit our bank account was a big thrill.  It meant I could now make the move from wooden block model to real, working prototype – hardware + software + web services/API.    The picture here is our first working prototype, which included an ARM9 base + Mobitex wireless modem and three modules – motion, GPS and camera.

The path from wooden blocks to shipping product is a story in itself, and I won’t spend time on it here.   It would make a great series of future posts.  But suffice to say, it was a series of tall challenges, frustrating realizations, hard work and luck (good and bad ).  Having had a twenty year career in software, I was not prepared for electronic component vendors telling me they would NOT sell me the parts I needed.  Nor the contract manufacturers turning me away because what we were doing was too strange.  Needless to say there are big differences between innovating in the world of bits vs atoms.  And, as I look back on the path we took, I see great value in it.  Mainly because we lived/live through a series of processes that are the norm for anyone looking to build an electronic device and bring it to production.  Why is that important?  First, we’ve been there and now “know that of which we speak”.  This “norm” is archaic and unnecessary.  It’s needlessly expensive, arbitrary and risky.  Second, because I started Bug Labs to help others avoid these very issues.

Later this week, I will talk about how we see the future…

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!

Today, we’re excited to announce the availability of BUGsound, the first of the five BUGmodules we announced last month at CES. With a speaker, microphone, hardware stereo codecs and four 3.5-mm stereo jacks, you can use BUG to build your own portable music player, speakerphone, audio server and more.

Priced at $99 and shipping now, you can buy BUGsound from our store today. We really look forward to seeing what cool apps the community can make with this latest BUGmodule. BUGcommunity member finsprings used the BUGbase, BUGmotion and BUGsound to create phunky, a pretty nifty accelerometer-based sampling app. Check out the video to see it in action.

More information and some videos can be found on the BUGsound product page, and you can download hardware specs and diagrams from our wiki. And jump into the conversation on our IRC channel (#buglabs) to see what others are making as well.

Today, we’re excited to announce a new project we’re kicking off with IDEO, a well known international design and innovation firm.  Taking cues from everything we’ve seen in the community, our own experiences with new and emerging interface technologies and your direct input, we hope to gather several new ideas on how we can re-envision user interaction with the BUGbase.  Essentially, we are going to build on the great work done to-date by our original design partner ECCO Design and explore an area of our product that we think has a ton of potential – the BUGbase user interface.

So, we want *your* feedback!  IDEO has agreed to do this project in the open, which is a new approach for them, and we’re hoping it leads to superior results for Bug Labs and the BUGcommunity.  We don’t have a fancy name (yet) for this process, and we’re still working on the specifics for collecting your input.  But since everything we do is based on community participation, we are big fans of the idea, and naturally open to all your suggestions.

Over the next two weeks both companies will be posting their ideas and reporting on progress, via this blog and BUGcommunity.com.  At every point in this cycle we would love to get your thoughts on the work-to-date, and at the end we will publish our findings, which again we welcome your thoughts on.

The whole point of this exercise is to continue to push the boundaries of how we innovate, not just on the BUGbase UI, but on all things related to BUG.  We take pride in thinking our designs are good, but we also know they are exponentially better when the community gets involved.

Thanks in advance for your participation in this fun new project, and stay tuned for updates!

2009 marks Bug Labs’ second year at the Consumer Electronics Show (Jan 8-11, 2009), and while we’re still trying to find a way to top our debut at CES 2008, we can guarantee it’s going to be a fun time in Vegas next week.  This year, we’re bringing more than double the BUG staffers, more than double the BUGmodules (stay tuned for that announcement next week!), and more than double the excitement of last year.

We’re located in the Innovations Pavilion, at booth #IP204 in the Sands Expo Center inside the Venetian Hotel (here’s a map).  Just walk toward the tower of black smoke look for the BUG folks in the white lab coats, and we’ll show you what’s cooking in our Test Kitchen.

For members of the media attending ShowStoppers, finding us is a snap.  Just look to your immediate left upon entering the ballroom and we’re there.

For those who won’t be attending, you can follow us via Twitter, watch us live on UStream, or even chat with us (AOL IM: bugplus) while we’re building BUGs on the show floor.

And again, sign up for our newsletter or stay tuned to Bug Blogger next Wednesday as we announce some exciting news.

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