There are some absolutely SUPERB conferences dedicated to Java (the language, the platform, the ecosystem) around the world, and I’ve been privileged to speak at some of them. No two are alike, and that is a good thing! JavaOne San Francisco holds a very special place in that lineup, bringing together a phenomenal mixture of vision, direction, community leadership, and grassroots innovation that is nearly impossible to describe. You just have to be there!

This year I’m pleased and honored to be presenting in three sessions, sharing the stage with some of my favorite people from around the world: Jim Weaver, Sean Phillips, David Heffelfinger, Geertjan Wielenga, Jens Deters, José Pereda, and James Gosling. As I said, it’s a genuine honor!

Here are the sessions in which I’ll be taking part:

Creating Our Robot Overlords: Autonomous Drone Development with Java and the Internet of Things [CON1863]
Tuesday, Sep 30, 2:30 PM – 3:30 PM – Hilton – Continental Ballroom 4

Who wants a mindless drone? Teach it to “think,” and it can do so much more. But how do you take it from Toy Story to Terminator? This session’s speakers discuss their new open source library, Autonomous4j, for autonomous drone development. Combining this library and some components from their mad science toolkit, they demonstrate how to get your Internet of Things off the ground and do some real cloud computing. In the session, you’ll learn how to write an autonomous drone program with Java 8; deploy it to the drone’s “positronic brain,” an onboard Raspberry Pi; have the Pi guide an AR.Drone to accomplish a task; monitor it via a JavaFX console; and create your own robot overlord. Demos are included: you’ve been warned!

With Jim Weaver & Sean Phillips

Debugging and Profiling Robots with James Gosling [CON6699]
Wednesday, Oct 1, 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM – Hilton – Continental Ballroom 4

James Gosling recently stated that “being able to debug and profile robots out at sea is a truly life-altering experience.” He uses a set of tools—consisting of editors, debuggers, and profilers—that are part of the NetBeans IDE. In this session, Gosling and other speakers introduce you to these tools and show you how easily and quickly you can program and interact with devices via Java tools. Come see how well integrated embedded devices are with the Java ecosystem.

With Geertjan Wielenga, Jens Deters, José Pereda, & James Gosling

Java Platform, Enterprise Edition Lab 101: An Introduction [HOL1827]
Wednesday, Oct 1, 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM – Hilton – Franciscan A/B

For anyone familiar with the Java language but without direct Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) experience, the capabilities and APIs in Java EE can seem daunting. Documentation is helpful, and well-written books can make it easier to come up to speed, but isn’t the best way to learn something to actually do it? This session’s speakers hope to smooth the path for anyone curious about Java EE by offering a gentle, yet useful, introduction to four key concepts:

• JavaServer Faces (JSF)
• Contexts and Dependency Injection (CDI)
• Java Persistence API (JPA)
• Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB)

Using NetBeans and the bundled GlassFish application server, the speakers present each new concept with live code and then help attendees complete hands-on exercises.

With David Heffelfinger (and gracious assistance from Sven Reimers, Josh Juneau, Bob Larsen, & Bruno Borges)

I’ve said it before: There’s no better place to see what’s happening in the world of Java than JavaOne. Hope to see you there!

All the best,
Mark

Cross-posted from The Java Jungle.

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• Adding Solar/PV to A MANAGEABLE Renewable Energy System
• Nighthacking Interview: Jfokus
• Quick & Dirty How-to Guide: Install GlassFish 4 on Raspberry Pi
• Building a Portable, Self-powering, Cloud-Connected IoT demo
• Thanks For Sharing Informal International HackFest – A Virtual Event!

We had to postpone it last month, but it’s ON!

The full details behind the idea and planned execution can be found here (HackFest – Thanks For Sharing!), but to quote one of my favorite movies of all time, “Let me sum up”: this is an unofficial, un-sponsored-by-anyone virtual gathering of friends and soon-to-be-friends just pounding away on their Java code. JavaFX? Sure! Java SE or ME Embedded? Check. Another JVM language? Bring it! Join into a planned project (Hendrik Ebbers is cooking up something special for any who’d like to contribute to it) or BYOP – Bring Your Own Project. Whether you’re diving to new depths in a familiar area or tinkering with a new idea or API, it’s all fair game.

I plan to set up a Google Hangout and keep it open for the duration. Join in for as long (or as little) as you like! Here are the details:

Begins: 1200 (noon) UTC/GMT on Saturday, November 16th
Ends: 1200 (noon) UTC/GMT on Sunday, November 17th
Where: Google Hangouts

Calendar reminder and invite will be sent to all who want to join in the fun.

Please spread the word (it’s easy, just use the Share/Save button below), and let me know if you can attend, whether for a half hour or all 24! Just email me here to “sign up” and be kept in the loop of any updates, new news, or post-HackFest (subsequent HackFest(s)?) announcements. Looking forward to hearing from you (yes, YOU!) and hanging out, learning, growing, & sharing.

Keep that (Java) code flowing!
Mark

Related Posts:

• HackFest – Postponed!
• HackFest – Thanks For Sharing!
• Join Us at JavaOne 2014!
• Quick & Dirty How-to Guide: Install GlassFish 4 on Raspberry Pi
• Getting up & running quickly with Spring Cloud Sleuth

I’ve been testing various “embedded platforms” lately to provide infrastructure for my IoT configurations. In doing so, I’ve installed and configured the GlassFish 4 Web Profile to run successfully on the Raspberry Pi Model B (512M). This post is not meant to be exhaustive or even necessarily prescriptive, but rather an iterative log of what I’ve done and do to configure a Raspberry Pi to “run with the big dogs”, i.e. Java Enterprise Edition (EE) 7.

Please check back (or subscribe to my RSS feed for IoT) to monitor updates. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a very dynamic space and will likely remain so for some time! The only constant…is change.  😀

Document version 1.3 (This number will change as I make updates and is for reference only)

Steps to Install/Configure GlassFish 4 on the Raspberry Pi

1. Download the latest version of Raspbian Wheezy from here. You can install NOOBS, Arch, or some other distro, but I chose Raspbian. Note that this distro includes the Java SE 7 JDK, which simplifies things a bit. If you wish to use an previous Raspbian build that doesn’t already include the JDK, simply run “sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install oracle-java7-jdk” from your Pi shell.
2. Make a bootable SD card by doing the following (on my Mac; Windows steps will vary a bit):
   1. Unzip/decompress the downloaded image from step 1
   2. Open a Mac terminal window
   3. Run “diskutil list” to see drives
   4. Plug SD card into SD card slot
   5. Again run “diskutil list” to see drives, now including the SD card
   6. Run “sudo diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskn“, where n is the disk number of the SD card (as reported by diskutil)
   7. Issue the following command, being very careful to ensure the of= parameter points to the SD card! If not, you can overwrite something you’d rather not…like your boot drive: “sudo dd if=<path/name_of_Raspbian_image.img> of=/dev/diskn bs=1m”
   8. Once dd completes, issue “diskutil eject /dev/diskn” to eject the SD card
3. Plug the SD card into the Pi, plug ethernet cable and power into the Pi to boot.
4. At this point, you’ll need to determine current (dynamic) IP address of the Pi. I plugged in my Atrix Lapdock and did this “on the Pi”, but you can also use nmap or connect it to HDMI (TV) and USB keyboard.
5. Run “sudo raspi-config” and set the following:
   1. Expand the file system to take the entire SD card (not just what the image initially does)
   2. Under Internationalisation Options, change Locale, Timezone, & Keyboard layout as desired
   3. Overclock to High (950MHz). I’ve tried Turbo, but it seems prone to flakiness & data loss…at least for me.
   4. Under Advanced Options, change Hostname to desired Pi name, Memory Split to 16 (as a server, we can skinny the GPU memory allocation to maximize “main” memory), and enable SSH. You can also “Update this tool” (raspi-config) to the latest version, never a bad thing.
   5. Select “Finish” to reboot the Pi & use the new settings
6. Ensure the Pi has a static IP by doing the following (recommended for any server):
   1. Run “ifconfig -a” and “netstat -nr” on the Pi to gather the following information: current IP (if you want to keep it), netmask, gateway, destination, and broadcast. Jot these down.
   2. Make a backup of /etc/network/interfaces by running “sudo cp /etc/network/interfaces /etc/network/interfaces.orig
   3. Modify the interfaces file. I used vi, but use whatever editor you can & are comfortable with! The vi syntax is “sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces”
   4. Change the line that reads “iface eth0 inet dhcp” to “iface eth0 inet static” and add the following lines:
      • address 192.168.1.nnn (this is the IP address you want the Pi to have & keep)
      • netmask 255.255.255.0 (or whatever was shown in ifconfig -a above)
      • network 192.168.1.0 (or whatever was in the destination column, 2nd line from netstat -nr above)
      • broadcast 192.168.1.255 (as shown in ifconfig -a)
      • gateway 192.168.1.1 (or what was shown in either ifconfig or netstat)
   5. Save the file
   6. Reboot the Pi (“sudo reboot”)
   7. NOTE: You’ll also need to tell your network DHCP device/router that the IP address you statically assigned to the Pi is off-limits for assigning to another device
7. Download GlassFish 4 Web Profile (or full EE platform) from here. I chose the Zip installer.
8. Copy the GlassFish .zip file to the Pi (“scp glassfish-4.0-web.zip pi@raspi:.”). I have an entry in my Mac’s /etc/hosts that points “raspi” to the Pi’s static IP address.
9. On the Pi, “install” GlassFish by doing the following:
   1. Run “sudo mkdir -p /app/glassfish” to create GlassFish app parent directory
   2. Run “sudo chown pi /app/glassfish” to assign directory ownership to the pi user. Not absolutely necessary, but you typically don’t want root to own everything (although honestly at this stage & for this install, it’s not critical)
   3. “cd /app/glassfish” as the pi user to change directories into the “install” directory
   4. Run “unzip ~/glassfish-4.0-web.zip” to extract the GF files into this directory
10. Now to configure GF to allow for remote administration/configuration using its web console app:
    1. “cd /app/glassfish/glassfish4/bin”
    2. Run “./asadmin change-admin-password --user admin” to assign a password to the admin user. The admin password defaults to a blank password, a no-no for GF remote admin.
    3. Run “./asadmin start-domain” to start the default domain (which comes preconfigured in GF)
    4. Run “./asadmin enable-secure-admin” to enable remote administration using the web console
    5. In order to take utilize remote admin, stop the domain by running “./asadmin stop-domain”, then…
    6. Start the domain once more with “./asadmin start-domain”
11. From your workstation/laptop, plug this into a browser address bar: “raspi:4848” (substituting the name of your Pi per your /etc/hosts file) or “192.168.1.n:4848″ (substituting the IP address or your Pi) to load the GF admin console
12. Login and relish the fact that you now have a full Java EE 7 stack (or web profile) running on your Raspberry Pi server!

I’m capturing this from memory, so it’s possible I’ve missed a step I performed or have related it not-exactly-perfectly…but if you spot something that isn’t quite right or have questions, please let me know! I’ll update this document accordingly. YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary), especially if you’re using a Linux or Windows machine for your workstation, but hopefully, this will get you that much closer to your own tiny Java EE 7 stack for your own growing IoT empire.

All the best,
Mark

P.S. – Follow me on Twitter at @MkHeck for more Java/IoT adventures…yours and mine (and ours)!

Related Posts:

• Building a Portable, Self-powering, Cloud-Connected IoT demo
• Adding Solar/PV to A MANAGEABLE Renewable Energy System
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• Spring Boot for IoT Developers: Getting Started

“But little Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!”

From “To a Mouse” (translated), by Robert Burns

As Burns so nicely stated, it was a great plan. Still is, actually, just not for October 12th! The inaugural Thanks for Sharing Informal International HackFest will be rescheduled for a later date – sometime in November, in all likelihood – due to a last-minute assignment on a short-suspense Java EE project. When duty calls…

Anyway, please check back (or keep your eye on my Twitter feed @MkHeck) for updates. Looking forward to a good time with great friends soon, creating & seeing some fun & useful projects. Until then!

All the best,
Mark

Related Posts:

• Thanks For Sharing Informal International HackFest – A Virtual Event!
• HackFest – Thanks For Sharing!
• Join Us at JavaOne 2014!
• Quick & Dirty How-to Guide: Install GlassFish 4 on Raspberry Pi
• Getting up & running quickly with Spring Cloud Sleuth

Do you love programming in Java (or for the JVM)? Learning new things? Do you enjoy just hanging with friends and exploring new ground, sharing in discoveries small and large? If so, consider yourself invited to the first, uh, periodic Thanks For Sharing Informal International HackFest, a virtual event scheduled for October 12-13, 2013!

The Genesis

Some of us were chatting on Twitter about how fun it would be to get together and just jam at the keyboard. So I thought, why not? Yes, that’s all there is to it. Good doesn’t necessarily have to be complex.  🙂

The Idea

First of all, this isn’t a conference; it’s a hackfest, up to 24 hours of friends and soon-to-be friends around the world just hanging out and banging out code for fun. No pressure to “bring your A game”…in fact, the central theme of this particular gathering is to pick out something you’ve been planning to explore and just haven’t had the chance yet. BYOP: Bring Your Own Project! Want to know more about CSS? RESTful Web Services? Cryptography? Java SE or ME on the Raspberry Pi? Whether you want to explore JavaFX custom controls or lambdas, OpenJDK or Jetty, pick something and plan to pound away at it…all in great company.

This isn’t an official event sponsored by Oracle or anyone else; it’s just a gathering of like-minded developers. Chat a lot, say nothing at all, stay an hour or all 24. It’s up to you!

Ground “Rules”

Well first, there aren’t any. Nothing hard and fast, anyway.

But here are some suggestions, if I may:

• Sometime before October 12th, think of an idea, something fun you can work on for a few hours and gain something from the experience.
• Log into the Google Hangout whenever you can – it’s okay, we’ll be there 24 hours!
• Explore, chat, ask questions, offer helpful advice…be as social as you’d like! Or not. Quiet is fine, too. 🙂
• It would be really nice of you to post any useful code you come up with to GitHub. No pressure, don’t feel you have to do…but even code you consider very rough or “exploratory” may be helpful to someone else. And the more we all share, the more we all learn!
  

That’s it, really. Just a bunch of folks getting together to tinker with code and hang out. What are you waiting for?!?

The Details

Oh yes, the details! Here they are:

Begins: 1200 (noon) UTC/GMT on Saturday, October 12th
Ends: 1200 (noon) UTC/GMT on Sunday, October 13th
Where: Google Hangouts

Calendar reminder and invite will be sent to all who want to join in the fun.

RSVP

This is your part! If you’re interested in participating, drop me a line by clicking this link. And please share, repost, and retweet to others who might like to be a part. Come on, it’ll be fun! Join us for the first Informal, International HackFest…and Thanks For Sharing.  😀

All the best,
Mark
Mark at TheHecklers dot org
Mark dot Heckler at Gmail dot com
or click here for public keys to send a message via PGP!

See you at the HackFest!

Related Posts:

• Thanks For Sharing Informal International HackFest – A Virtual Event!
• HackFest – Postponed!
• Join Us at JavaOne 2014!
• Quick & Dirty How-to Guide: Install GlassFish 4 on Raspberry Pi
• Getting up & running quickly with Spring Cloud Sleuth