I just received my Sentilla Perk (Pervasive Computing Kit) some hours ago (Picture 1). I want to thank Sentilla so much and, in special, Cheryl Hall, for being very attentive. If you don't know Sentilla yet, it wons the Duke Awards in Pervasive Solutions category this year at JavaOne!

I have installed my kit on Windows Vista, it is described in the box that Windows XP is required. Anyway, it worked and it seems there is a beta version for Linux and Mac OS X too. The dev forum in the previous link needs registering, so be sure you create an user before.

The basic steps to start are (from the instructions that came in the kit):

1. Setup the Motes (Install the batteries and switch them one)
2. Install Software (Insert the CD and install the IDE)
3. Insert the Gateway (in a USB port)
4. Install Drivers (from USB Serial Drivers folder in the CD)
5. Launch Sentilla (Launch the IDE called Sentilla Work)
6. Get Started! (Go ahead, take a look in the demos and create your own applications)

Sentilla Work is based on Eclipse (Picture 2), so you will not have problems to start developing. There is a Welcome page that shows how to start and how to install Sentilla Work Mote Project, which contains a lot of useful demos.

Sentilla Perk Kit is a CLDC-compliant Java ME-based platform (CLDC 1.1). Because talk is cheap, here it goes a very simple Hello World based on a code available on Mote Project. The snippet is very simple and blinks the red LED every one second. As you can see, there is no MIDP lifecycle and it defines its own libraries. The deploy on the motes are done very easy in the IDE using the gateway. The application running is in the Picture 1 as well.

import com.sentilla.system.Leds;
import com.sentilla.system.LedsDriver;

public class MoteBlinkRed {
    public static void motemain() throws InterruptedException {
        Leds leds = LedsDriver.create();
        while (true) {
            leds.toggle(1);
            Thread.sleep(1000);
        }
    }
}

Get started too! Keep an eye here, my fun is guaranteed until the end of the year! :)