Styx-on-a-Brick

The aim of the Vita-Nuova ‘‘styx-on-a-brick’’ project was to demonstrate the simplicity of the Styx protocol and the ease with which a Styx ‘stub’ can be implemented on tiny devices. We also aimed to demonstrate the effectiveness of a protocol based approach to resource management and sharing, whether the resource be a physical device or a software service. Adopting a protocol-centric view of resource and service management, as opposed to a language-centric approach (as emphasised for instance by Jini" with Java) greatly eased the software burden on our tiny target device implementing a simple protocol in firmware required much less work than trying to implement a virtual machine. We are confident that if we had adopted a language-centric approach, we would not have completed the project within our aggressive space and implementation time constraints. The project took 2 weeks from start to finish. In this time the firmware was developed and all client software was written: firmware download, IR-link protocol support, clockface application and worldclock application. Two people worked on the project, one full-time, the other (Nigel Roles) part-time. The demo was then taken on a Press Conference tour of the US and later appeared at the Usenix2000 Plan 9/Inferno BOF at the request of Dennis Ritchie. I should stress that the project was a demonstration of the ease of supporting Styx on small devices it was not a demo of robotics! (Indeed, the design of the IR-link protocol, Styx name space and the services provided by the firmware would be considerably different for serious robotics.)