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Is Anyone Using OSGi

Posted by Cliff on from the filling-da-niche dept.

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?"

4 of 23 comments (clear)

  1. Huh? by fille · · Score: 3, Informative

    What about these? 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
    ...

    --
    History matters..
  2. Checkout ProSyst by regen · · Score: 3, Informative
    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. They have a server and bundles for various tasks. I've used it in the past to control X10.

    --
    The Economics of Website Security
  3. OSGi - not for your fridge! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    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

    OSGi: an Embedded Application Server Framework

  4. OSGi seems to have slowed down by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    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.