Java Raspberries

There is something magical about the Raspberry Pi . Is it a hype? Is it for hobbyists only? Is it the basis of the refrigerator of the future? As you’re putting the fidgety pieces and wires together an elderly man walks by muttering: “Ah, yes, just like when I had to put my radio together myself, 50 years ago.” Once you have set up a Raspberry Pi, the next step is to install “ JDK8 for Arm ” on it. Here is how, on the command line of the Raspberry Pi: Once you have done that, you need: Putty, WinSCP, SSH, and other command line tools, right? Wrong.You can simply register JDK 8 for ARM in NetBeans IDE (as shown above). None other than James Gosling himself has done this for his robots at LiquidRobotics Indeed, once the JDK on the Raspberry Pi is registered in NetBeans IDE, all the clunkiness of working with Java on the Raspberry Pi instantly disappears.As James Gosling indicates above, deploying Java apps to the Raspberry Pi is only the beginning. After all, you also need to debug and troubleshoot those applications, don’t you? Just like any other application.

Here is a YouTube clip showing the intuitive debugging, including stepping through code deployed on the Raspberry Pi:

Moreover, what you want is an environment that is comprehensive, encompassing not only Java embedded tools, as described above, but all kinds of other tools too. For example, how about putting your Raspberry Pi applications in GitHub directly from the same environment where you’re coding, debugging, and profiling them?Get started via the instructions in “Using Oracle Java SE Embedded Support in NetBeans IDE” , referred to below:As a final point, while other tools exist that do similar things, you really need a fully integrated solution that is comprehensive and that works out of the box as soon as you start it up, without needing special configuration and plugin installation steps.

Imagine, if you will, the experience of working with Java on the Raspberry being identical to working with any other kind of Java application on your local PC. From creating the skeleton application, to developing it, to debugging, and profiling. All the skills you have already developed can seamlessly be transferred to the new environment of the Raspberry Pi, as well as other embedded devices, with Java and NetBeans.