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.

On Monday, we were lucky to have the NY Java Meetup host their monthly meeting here at Bug Labs HQ. In addition to eating lots of pizza and drinking lots of beer (and playing lots of COD2 afterward), we managed to actually talk a thing or two about Java. Our friend Timothy Fagan gave a great detailed review of JavaOne 2009 (check out some of the slides here), and we tried a few Java Puzzlers from one of the sessions presented at the show. We even gave away a few cool door prizes, like a copy of IntelliJ.

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.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I attended the “Soul of the New Machine” conference at the Berkeley Human Rights Center this week in Oakland.  I was there with Enrique Piraces from Human Rights Watch as a finalist in the Mobility Challenge.  We were honored to receive an Honorable mention in the contest.  Big congrats to the winners! – Guardian, Freedom Fone and Handheld Human Rights.  IDG posted an quick clip of BUG at the event here.

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.

I’m at the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center “The Soul of the New Machine” conference.  We have teamed with Human Rights Watch to present a submission to their Mobility Challenge.  We were thrilled to make it to the top ten finalists and have the next two days to make our case to the judges.

I’ll let you know how we do.

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!

When we released our v1.0 BUG platform we believed, from our initial research, that it would appeal to three market categories – early adopters/hackers, entrepreneurs/product developers and educators/students.  We guessed that the majority of orders would come from the first group – individual technologists.  This was true initially.  But quickly, our order mix tipped in favor of the enterprise, the second category.

Today over 50% of our orders come from companies, many of them big Fortune 500 corporations.   We were a little surprised by this.  We had assumed that big companies had the budgets necessary to custom build whatever hardware they needed/wanted.  We were wrong.  In talking to many of these customers it became clear that getting internal funding for new hardware projects was at least as difficult (sometimes more) as prying dollars out of a VC.   They were drawn to the BUG platform because it gave them a complete, vertically integrated hardware/software system that they could use to innovate and explore options without having to go beg for funding.  And when they did decide to make the trek upstairs to meet with the suits, they had a well tested, functional prototype to show with results to prove their case.  This story was also making sense to entrepreneurs who, like us when we started, were discovering that innovating in hardware was a looking a little more complicated than it first appeared.

What have I learned in the past 36 months?  I’m used to saying that hardware is “hard”.  And it most certainly is.  I’m reminded of it almost everyday.  But I’ve started to include a more optimistic position as well.  Having seen our customers at work, I realize now that it doesn’t have to be.  It can be made much easier, cheaper and more enjoyable.  Is our system exactly right?  No.  We still have much to learn from everyone using it to do new things.  We have to continue working hard on our platform so our users don’t have to.   We need to continue to refine our design (see picture above from our work with IDEO).  The other thing I’ve learned is that companies, organizations and even individuals are beginning to realize that devices don’t have to just come from the Big Guys.  Amazon’s Kindle is a good case in point.  This is a seismic shift.  But in order for it to really happen, the pain and suffering must be taken out of hardware prototyping, piloting and production.

As I look at the breadth of BUG-based projects going on now – in such diverse areas as health care, asset tracking, home automation, security, point-of-sale, to name a few – and in many areas around the world, I can’t help but feel that we’re on the right track.  We are still a ways from making it as easy as just snapping LEGOs together, but that vision is still the golden ring.  We’ll get there.  I look forward to telling you how we did twelve more months from now.

PS – I will devote a separate post to our experiences in the world of education.  The activity and lessons-learned there are fascinating and bode well for the future of electronics!