In just about 10 days, EclipseCon Europe and its storm of great keynotes, awesome talks, and yummy frosty beverage will be all upon its lucky participants.
This year, two great programming contests will allow you to have fun doing what most of you do best: write code!
In this post, I am going to tell you a bit more about the Machine-to-Machine contest that Sierra Wireless has set up for you, in collaboration with freedroidz.
We have built a network of Arduino+Xbee routers that collect data out of sensors (temperature, ambient light, …) and a Lego Mindstorms, and send it to a NoSQL database (MongoDB, actually). Data is consolidated using MapReduce jobs (remember this EclipseCon US 2011 keynote?), and we want you to use all this information to build something innovative and interactive: smartphone application, augmented reality, cool data visualization… Unleash your creativity!
We also think that there are a few Eclipse technologies that you can bring into play to create something even cooler: BIRT charts, Nebula widgets, ECF XMPP provider to post notifications via Instant Messaging, …
The winner will get an iPad2 !
Simulated data is available if you want to start working on your application already. We will drop all the fake data just before the conference starts, and you will then have access to real, live data instead.
Also, keep looking at the contest documentation page to get the most up-to-date information. In particular, we are still polishing a few things regarding SMS interactions, and an RFID scanner that should allow you to come up with applications even more close to real-life use cases. Stay tuned!
For the record, here is how my desk looks like just now… 
My colleagues would certainly say it is just a little bit messier than usual, but…
Oh, and for all of you interested in geeky electronics stuff, Arduino, and Open Source Hardware, just don’t miss David Cuartielles keynote on Wednesday! But that’s a keynote, so you will be there anyway, right? 
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