Is Anyone Using OSGi

An Anonymous Coward queries: "OSGi is a Java technology for allowing third party venders to control your domestic appliances (Fridge, Front Door, Security System etc). I have been tasked to implement OSGi apps, but cannot find any working examples, is anybody working on OSGi applications?"

Since you really wanted an answer...

[Ass-Gas-Istan]

...is anybody working on OSGi applications?

No.

My nonsense

[Vodak]

I don't see many people in the slashdot community coding or knowning about related project because there is no real need. Personally I think that this is one of them technologies that is being pushed onto a consume market that doesn't want it. Sure your refrigerator telling someone that your out of milk and automatically ordering it is cool. but who would really want it other then having it for the novelty factor?

Re:My nonsense

[ClickNMix]

I wouldn't mind been in a shop and been able to check what I had in the fridge however, be it by some product log, or just a cam inside!

Or better still, having the fridge tell you who took that last beer..

Huh?

[fille]

What about these [osgi.org]? It reads:

OSGi Based Products

A listing of products that use OSGi technology

4DAgent
Acunia, Embedded Solutions XINGU Product Offering
Aleato
Amino
Atinav aveLink
Bluelabs
...

Do people still come up with this stuff?

[boltar]

I thought all this web enabled kitchen appliances, curtains and pet dogs had joined the
1950s jetson style flying cars and the 1970s Honeywell Kitchen Computer in the Hall of
Really Stupid Ideas By Geeks Who Don't Get Out Enough? Guess I was wrong.

Re:Do people still come up with this stuff?

[jo42]

These wankers, www.lga.ca [www.lg.ca], are running ads on Canadian televisions showing a fridge ordering crap and some photogenic tosser adjusting his air conditioning from a cell phone while some photogenic wench strokes his wee willy.

Just wait till hackers start melting your ice cream in yer fridge and turning the heat off in the family igloo.

hackers?

[Innomi]

great, now virus's really WILL make the icecream go melty when they infect my refrigerator.

Checkout ProSyst

[regen]

I've done some OSGi work in the past and I found it a royal pain. What it is really meant for is having a "Service Provider" (aka Utility, Cable company, etc...) manage a device remotely.

That said, check out ProSyst [prosyst.com]. They have a server and bundles for various tasks. I've used it in the past to control X10.

Re:Checkout ProSyst

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, I *really* want my cable company to control my refrigerator and the phone company to take care of my washing machine. Please, tell me how to sign up for this wonderful service.

Programming Appliances

[ClickNMix]

Sure the extream uses of this kind of technology are generally crazy at best, most of the subtle ones are over looked, and just creep in little by little.

Wouldnt it be nice to just press a button on your PDA, so by the time you step in to your kitchen, your coffee pot you set up before work has just brewed perfectly. Or turning off the oven because that 'One pint' with the lads turned out to be a few more, and you don't want your dinner you left in the oven to over cook because you wont be back in time to turn it off.

At some point, somebody will do something with just the right amount of 'GeeWizz' and functionality to make a great product...

Re:Programming Appliances

[zangdesign]

The problem is that eventually this stuff just stops being used. Sure it's a interesting idea, but how much work is it really to just turn the coffee on yourself?

It would be interesting to see what percentage of the public uses this gadgetry after a year of ownership.

Re:Programming Appliances

[ClickNMix]

I think its fair to say that 99% of these kind of features will be nothing more then gadgets, and stop been used after not so long for sure. However, Im also sure there will also be just a few things that people will keep using, and stop been fun toys and become useful everyday items. After all, Im sure people figured things like electric toasters and kettles weren't really needed, your oven does the job just fine. But who know would even think about boiling a kettle on the hob or grilling some bread for toast?

Re:Programming Appliances

[zangdesign]

What the heck is a hob?

^---- Stupid American :)

Re:Programming Appliances

[ClickNMix]

Hob == Rings on top of oven where you put the pans etc.

^---- Mad Englishman ;o)

OSGi - not for your fridge!

[Anonymous Coward]

seems like most people mistakenly associated OSGi with talking fridges.
- guess OSGi is doing a pretty bad job marketing itself here ;)

OSGi is an embedded component framework which simplifies the task to create modular distributed applications targeted to embedded devices

What you do with it is up to the developer.
developing simple hello world bundles using OSGi is overkill and frustrating.
but creating flexible, modular distributed and managed applications is almost impossible without re-inventing OSGi.

Technologies where OSGi is used today sucessfully include telematics and in-car computing, as well as broadband service delivery platforms.
for a working development kit check out Gatespaces SGADK: Gatespace.com [gatespace.com]

OSGi: an Embedded Application Server Framework

OSGi seems to have slowed down

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry I'm posting anonymously, I'm just trying to avoid any possible repercussions to my being totally forthright.

I wrote some OSGi bundles in the past for the company I work for. I found it to have a bit of a learning curve, but once you buy in to their design philosophy, it's pretty easy, really. I was the tech lead on the project, and it got released but not used much, due to a schizophrenic marketing campaign.

Anyway, I'm still subscribed to several expert group mailing lists at OSGi, and I've noticed that the flow of information and questions has all but halted completely. I think that with the "tech slump", a lot of companies laid off people that were working on OSGi. (After all, it is kind of a fringe bit of research for pretty much all of the companies involved.) Also, the embedded networking space has been pretty slow lately.

Anyway, I think OSGi had some good ideas, and I hope that things improve for them. The biggest problems I saw was that Java, even micro edition, is still quite large for an embedded processor, and the existing engineers doing embedded work don't usually have much Java experience. After all, the whole point is to make a framework that allows for easy integration of embedded communications code.

Anyway, good luck, and read the docs carefully. The information you need is in there, it's just a bit difficult to extract it.

sure but for how much longer

[reverend0]

I am working at a company that is using OSGi pretty heavily. While I have basically been familarizing myself with their code it seems fairly straight forward. What are you using as a OSGi framework? Any specific question?

OSGi - where/what is it?

[pkriens]

Somebody pointed me to the OSGi [osgi.org] thread was held here. As somebody that has been involved with the specifications from the beginning it wa a bit disappointing to see how little one of the prime audiences for OSGi knew about it.
The core idea of the OSGi is to provide a Java based platform for collaborative networked services. It is specified in painstaking detail:

• How to lifecycle services
• The deployment format of services
• Dynamically discover attachment and deattachment of services
• A number of basic services like logging, http, device drivers, configuration management, preferences, user admin, wiring etc.
• How to make it secure

The target for the OSGi has always been small devices so the total overhead is kept to a minimum. Implementations are available from a large number of vendors like Gatespace, IBM, ProSyst, SUN that actively participated in the specifications. As an example, a very cool product built with OSGi is the Possio PX 20 Bluetooth to 802.11b gateway [possio.com]. Many more companies are in the final stages of delivering products. The OSGi has recently opened a developer zone [osgi.org] that may be relevent for people that want to know more. I think it is a pretty cool platform (OK, I am biased) that will end up in a lot of appliances and servers in the next few years.