Gavin Gear's Tech Blog

Hello everyone! It's been a while since I've been active here on my blog, but I'm excited to say that we have material that we'll be sharing at the //BUILD/ Windows conference next week! I hope to see some of you there!

Have you ever wanted to do something, and someone else beat you to it? (or saved you from the pain) Here's a project: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/system/wiisensor.aspx where 'gleat' on codeproject.com wrote a Windows 7 Sensor Platform driver...

The UK DPE (Developer Evangelism) team has posted a great video showing the Windows 7 Sensor and Location platform in use. In this video, you'll see how the Windows 7 Sensor Development Kit (Freescale board) can be used with XNA and Direct Input to allow...

Wow- the long-awaited VS 2010 release has finally come! With .NET 4 built in, there are many exciting new possibilities with Visual Studio. There are also quite a few enhancements in the "built on WPF" IDE. Auto completion of "switch on enum" expressions...

If you're interested in getting Visual Studio 2010 RTM, you won't have to wait long now! The global launch event is on April 12, 2010- more information is available here: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/visual-studio-events

Hello all- just wanted to inform you of some changes that will be coming in the .NET 4 / Visual Studio 2010 RC release related to the new Location API in System.Device.dll Here’s a high-level view of the .NET 4 Beta 2 Location API: (first public...

In my last post , I showed how you can write a simple .NET 4 Location-enabled console application. This application just output the location of the PC/device when the location changed. Here, we'll see how we can write an application that displays changes...

So you want to write an application in .NET that’s location-aware? Let’s start with a code sample (console application) that will show you how to use a GeoLocationProvider to respond to location updates, and print those updates out to the console. ...

Are you interested to learn more about how location devices and applications work in Windows 7? Do you want to see a demo of Windows 7, Location awareness, the new .NET 4 Location API, and Visual Studio 2010? If so, you can watch the session I presented...

Last year at PDC 2008, Microsoft first announced the Windows 7 Sensor and Location platform. Last month, we shipped Windows 7 worldwide, and the corresponding Windows 7 Sensor and Location platform. This is great because now sensor and location hardware...

Hey there- If you're interested in building location-aware applications, and if you're going to be at PDC this year, come check out the session I'll be presenting on Location-Awareness in .NET 4. Here's the information: http://microsoftpdc.com/Sessions...

Sergey Zwezdin (Microsoft C# MVP) has recently put together a 3 part series about the Windows 7 sensor platfom, the Windows 7 sensor development kits, and programming with C# with the platform for these boards: Part I: http://geekswithblogs.net/sergun...

Part of Windows 7 is a completely new platform for Location and Sensors. This is a framework that tries to remove the old legacy of COM-ports for communication with external devices. Even a lot of today's USB devices, still rely on the COM protocol to communicate with the PC. The Location and Sensor Platform in Windows 7 improves this with a modern architecture for arbitrary hardware sensory input. One of the most important advances in this platform is the ability for multiple applications to use the same sensors at the same time, this has always been some of a problem with GPS, where only one instance of the application could read the GPS coordinates. ...

Hello all- Pietro Brambati just posted a great writeup on how you can install and run the XNA car racing sample application, and drive the car using the accelerometer built into the Windows 7 Sensor Development kit- with step by step instructions! ...

With Windows 7 coming to the public soon, I thought I'd take a moment to write down a quick list of some of my favorite things that are new for Windows 7. Easy connection to networks With the new wireless connection interface, all you have to do is...

If you have a sensor development kit, and either don’t have the required software/firmware, or want to update your board’s firmware (to enter Windows 7 sensor demo mode by default, or to experiment with Adaptive Brightness in Windows 7) the following...

If you've purchased one of the new Freescale dev kits online , you may have noticed that the board does not work out of the box on Windows 7. The default mode is for Freescale demos. There are two options to get this board to work on Windows 7: ...

As a part of the Windows 7 RC release wave, the Windows SDK team has released the “Windows® API Code Pack for Microsoft® .NET Framework (v0.85)”. What is this code pack you may ask? This .NET source code supports new Windows 7 light-up developer features...

Now that Windows 7 RC builds are live, you may want to know “what do I need to download and install to get going with driver or application development on Windows 7”? Well, I’ll do my best to outline that here! Essential: Download and install...

What is the Virtual Light Sensor tool? This tool allows the user to simulate an ALS (Ambient Light Sensor) device. The main purposes for simulating ALS devices would be to either experiment with the new Windows 7 Adaptive Brightness feature, or to test...

If you've been wanting to get a Windows 7 Sensor development kit, you can now order directly from freescale here: http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=JMBADGE&tab=Buy_Parametric_Tab&fromSearch=false This board...

If you have been wondering about how to support your sensor or location device on Windows 7, wonder no longer! The Windows 7 Sensor WDK documentation is live on MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb870493.aspx This documention covers...

If you want to start learning about the new Windows 7 Sensor and Location platform, you can now access the Beta MSDN SDK documents online! Here's a couple of starting points: Sensor SDK BETA documentation Location SDK BETA documentation With this...

If you've been wondering what's new in Windows 7, you should install Windows 7 Beta which has just been released: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx This is a great opportunity to check out the new Windows Sensor and Location...

At WinHEC 2008 (Los Angeles) I gave a presentation that gives an overview of the new Windows 7 Sensor and Location Platform. This overview includes details about the components included in Windows 7, an overview of the opportunities for innovation with...