What is Sedona -- a language, a protocol, a framework, a town in Arizona?

Brian Frank, Founder, SkyFoundry

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Actually it is all of the above!  The best way to describe Sedona is as a complete "platform" to speed the development of smart, networked devices such as I/O controllers.  As a platform it includes several components:

• Programming Language: a simple Java-like language used to create your application logic and define new function block components
• Standard Library: of APIs and predefined function block components to speed development of new functionality
• Virtual Machine: to efficiently execute software developed in the Sedona programming language on different hardware devices that might use various microprocessors or operating systems (or have no operating system)
• Sox Protocol: a simple UDP/IP protocol to provision and configure devices

What is Sedona used for?

Sedona is essentially a ready-to-use software platform which is designed to be easily added to a networked device to give it smarts.  The Sedona software can be used to augment existing software or be the primary software application on a device.  Out-the-box, the Sedona Framework can be used to:

• provide a control engine to execute traditional function block control logic
• enable network connectivity for reprogramming that logic
• enable network connectivity to configure devices (such as modify setpoints, modes, etc)
• enable network connectivity to update firmware and software modules
• provide software framework to develop new protocol stacks and applications
  

Is Sedona open and what does that mean to potential users?

Sedona is "open" in the sense that all the intellectual property is licensed under a flexible "academic styled" open source license, the AFL 3.0.  As an open source platform, vendors have full access to all the source code.

This license grants commercial use of Sedona without any royalty payments.  By "academic style" we mean that the AFL 3.0 does not require derivative works also be open source.  This is in contrast a license like the GPL (used by Linux) which requires all derivate works to also be licensed under the GPL (and also be open source).  With the AFL a commercial company can improve, change, modify the Sedona source code and decide to keep those improvements as part of their proprietary offering.  So the license provides commercial company's a great deal of flexibility to tune Sedona for their own devices and applications.

Are people using Sedona today?

Yes, quite a few manufactures are shipping devices with Sedona as a standard software component.  Off the top of my head I know the following vendors are shipping Sedona powered devices: Infocon, Contemporary Controls, Solidyne, Pervasive Devices, SysMik.  And I am aware of quite a few products in development which will use Sedona which aren't publicly announced yet.

How can I learn more about Sedona and get the code base?

The best way to get started with Sedona is to visit http://sedonadev.org/.  You can review all the documentation and download the latest code from that site.  The website also has links to the live Mercurial code repository as well as links the forum used by the community.