Spot the SPOT?

Am still waiting for the Sun SPOT kit. The contact at Sun who offered to send me a kit doesn’t have an ETA. And from the comments on Sun’s mailing list, the company’s SPOT team doesn’t have an ETA either.

Postings on that list indicate problems regarding the RoHS compliance of the hardware, which means that the eval kits can’t be shipped into the European Union. RoHS is a new rule, which took effect in July 2006, that limits the amount of lead, cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyl and polybrominated diphenyl ether in electronic devices. But why that’s affecting distribution of the equipment in the U.S. is unclear.

>> Update 11/3 AM: Sun hasn’t responded to several requests for a schedule update.

>> Update 11/3 PM: Sun’s PR team told me, “At this point, it’s on hold.”