While deploying an application to a remote SunSPOT over the base station I get a “No sun spot basestation found” error every now and then. In the Sun SPOT forum are a few hints about that “problem”, but none really helped in my case. I’m currently developing on a Windows 2000 machine (once the new Sun SPOT beta release is installed I’ll switch to my MacBook).

Usually the base station is found automatically and you shouldn’t have to set the port explicitly. However, there are two parameters which allow you to point the “find spots” application into the right direction: sunport=COMn and port=COMn as explained in chapter 4 of the Developer’s Guide. So, whenever the base station apparently cannot be found I simply activate port=COM3 in my .sunspot.properties. That does the trick usually. Of course, I disable the parameter afterwards.

If that doesn’t help I go to my Windows Device Manager, open up the COM & LPT item and reinstall the Sun SPOT entry. Sometimes I need to restart my PC after that procedure.