Today at our inaugural Black Belt Bootcamp we spent the day talking about Windows Embedded CE, and all the great things that we have to offer for Real-Time, battery powered devices, etc.
we talked about some of the things to come (insert NDA, so I can’t say more)
then we rounded out the day talking to the CE/Compact team. Not to be outdone by the EW team, they came in to listen to some feedback from the day, as well as share some of their Vision for the Future. and my good friend, Mike Hall was in the room talking about his new ideas too… Here’s a pic of the team interacting with the Distributor guys!
Thanks for stopping by, guys!
We wrapped up day with with a visit from the Embedded Windows product unit - (this is the team that’s responsible for XPe and Windows Embedded Standard. )
We had some great discussions on the future of Windows Embedded, and what Microsoft’s plans and thoughts are about the industry… it was a great session… this is a perfect reason to become a Distributor Black Belt!
Here’s the team talking to the group:
Thanks for the time, Team!
Often, I get asked for when and where’s on CE official training. so here’s one. if you have partners that you know of that’s offering a Training, let me know, and I’ll post for everyone.
Here’s one:
Our friends at Adeneo Embedded will be offering CE training coming up in June! This is a good prep to get you started on your way to our MCP certification.
These guys are great. They are a Windows Embedded Gold partner, as well as have MVP’s on Staff. They offer ISV Services, as well as their Training Programs.
they have offered a Free Atmel or Freescale Development Kit to each Attendee!
From their Website:
The upcoming sessions are:
Here is the agenda:
For more information, Pricing and registration, contact sales@adeneo-embedded.com
Great Job, Adeneo! Thanks for Supporting CE!
This week, we have our Black Belt Distributor Engineers in town for some deep-dive training, as well as some sessions with some of the Product management team. Today, we had lunch with Kevin Dallas, GM of the Windows Embedded Business Unit – Here’s Kevin now, sharing his vision for the Future of embedded devices! Very interesting discussions!
Thanks for Stopping by, Kevin!
For those of you who haven’t downloaded the Windows 7 Release Candidate yet, here’s yet another reason to. XP mode.
Let’s say you have an application that you know has issues with Windows Vista or Windows 7, such as say… the CE 5.0 Tools, running in conjunction with the CE 6 tools?
Mind you, the tools are good, but they’re dated, and it’s not feasible to update the older tools for newer OS. but the dilemma – we embedded folk have to use tools and Operating systems for longer than normal commercial lives of computers!
The solution? use multiple boxes in your office, raising the heat levels and electricity consumption?
No…
it’s now very simple – run it in XP mode! Here’s how it works:
1. Install the Windows 7 Release Candidate for your machine (you should have done that already!)
Note: in order for this to work, your machine must support either Intel Virtualization Technology, or the AMD-V feature. (Hardware assisted Virtualization)
2. download the Virtual PC Beta and XP Mode package from the Microsoft Virtual PC homepage
install it, and you’re off to the races.
You interact with the installation of XP in Virtual PC just like you’d think – it’s a window that opens and you interact with a virtual Operating system.
Why, what’s that you see in the menu? yes, it’s a USB selection! you can redirect USB devices to your virtual PC session, such as Flash Disks, or HDD’s. one of the new improvements.
From there, you install your application, as you normally would, in the virtual PC window, and the system takes care of the rest for you! when it’s complete, you close the virtual PC session (don’t save your login state, as it will automatically close when you run apps in XP mode.), and then go to the Virtual PC menu. you’ll see a new entry called Virtual Windows XP Applications
See here I’ve installed Windows CE 5.0 Tools!
When you run that application, it will initialize the Virtual PC session in the background, but all you’ll see is the application running in your Windows 7 UI!
Go check it out! probably one of the coolest features I’ve seen for embedded developers on Windows 7. we often times have to run multiple versions of the dev tools, that might cause issues running in 7 or running side by side! This is a great solution to that problem!
Enjoy!
Mike just posted a great video, by Olivier Bloch, talking about Windows Embedded: From Sensors to Servers. Olivier shows off a CE device, that is the hard real-time control for a robot arm, as well as a WES device that’s the HMI for the system. the two communicate over a network, using DPWS discovery for the WPF HMI unit to find the CE device with the actual arm, and output data accumulated to a Windows Embedded Server… it’s a great watch, as well as a good example of distributed embedded computing.
Hey, Wait! isn’t that UI on the WES device one of Anthony Handley’s, from Magenic? He’s a great UI designer, and they’re, of course, a Microsoft Gold Partner!
Check it out here!
Great Job, Mike and Olivier!
we met with the folks from Kopin today, who announced the “Golden-I” device here at Tech ED.
It’s a great example of a next generation wearable computer device based on Windows Embedded CE 6.0! this device boasts full Voice Recognition, and the ability to playback video and Audio. Here are Olivier and Avet in our TLC booth at TechED demonstrating what it’s like to be one with a device!
we can’t seem to get Avet to part with it… I think he wants to be a Borg! This device is certainly getting a ton of attention in our Booth!
More cool stuff to come!
TTYL
JC
Well, campers, Tech Ed is underway… with our embedded precon yesterday, and all the sessions this week, to the booth in Technical Learning Center… there’s plenty of things to do.
Here’s Dion, and the guys from Beckhoff, the makers of our new real-time “Schtick” demo…
we were at the “yardhouse” … wonder why it has that name?
Lots of fun, and some very cool stuff to see! hope you can make it!
TTYL!
Earlier today, you may or may not have heard that we’ve published the Release Candidate for Windows 7 to IT pros, and for download. Here’s the main page for download. a few pointers:
1. Don’t put this on your primary home/office PC. While it’s great, and I’m running it on my primary PC, it is NOT production software yet.
2. remember to let Windows update do it’s thing. we are publishing updates for the RC build. (as a matter of fact, I installed 2 just a minute ago)
3. There are some FAQ’s and things you need to know prior to installing. please read them.
Feel free to let me know how your experience goes… I’m curious. I found it very easy!
Howdy all! I’m back online again, after some time prepping for upcoming events. One of which is Microsoft TechEd, May 11-15, 2009 in Los Angeles, CA! This is a great event to meet Microsoft folks, as well as industry experts, participate in a ton of learning sessions, and spend time with the Microsoft Windows Embedded Team!
I’ll be speaking a couple different times…
WEM204 – Use Microsoft Developer and Designer Tools to Make your Rich User Interface Embedded.
WEM01-INT – Design User Interfaces for Embedded Devices
(note the links will take you to the sessions page, and then you can search from there on Windows Embedded or by Speaker, John Coyne)
you’ll see sessions from Dion Hutchings, Mike Hall, Olivier Bloch, Doug Boling, and others… all the names you know and recognize in the embedded world! we hope to see you there.
I will also be spending plenty of time in the TLC area (Technical Learning Center) to answer questions you may have!
It’s right around the corner, so get registered now!
-JC
I’m sitting live here at ESC Silicon Valley, where we just heard from Admiral T.K. Mattingly (USN, Ret.), who was an astronaut on the Apollo 13 mission. he gave a great talk about his life and gave us a lot of insight into what happened up there that you didn’t get from the movie!
Also speaking now (live) is Kevin Dallas, our GM for Windows Embedded. he’s talking about our strategies for Software + Services, as well as just announced the Windows Embedded Server family, that’s just joined our Embedded portfolio. He’s demoing a WPF based HMI that’s remotely connected to a robot arm, running Windows Embedded CE. very cool Stuff… he’s talking about DPWS, and related technologies that come together to make this all come together. Great Job Kevin!
If you’re here in San Jose, stop by and say “Hi” !
Cheers!
Sorry it’s been awhile since I’ve posted… I’ve been absolutely buried with things to get done. Now that I’ve gotten *most* of them done, I’m here at ESC west, speaking again.
Interesting, while preparing demos and content yesterday, in Dion’s hotel room, we experienced a 4.3 magnitude earthquake. Dion, being from Australia and not having much experience with earthquakes, was a bit alarmed. Mike and I and I assured him that we were not going to die. the building did roll back and forth a bit, however! Having grown up in California, I’m somewhat accustomed to earthquakes, and assured Dion that this one was relatively minor.
Oh well, off to the Keynote. I might post a live entry during… provided I get all my work done first!
Mike and Olivier both posted today about the availability of the new MCP certification exam for Windows Embedded Standard (the OS formerly known as XPE)!
We will also have an exam prep guide that will come online over the next month or two. we’ll start posting chapters of it toward the end of this month. you can see the details here.
Very cool – we now have Certifications for 2 embedded Operating Systems – CE and WES.
Enjoy – we should have armies of certified professionals very soon!
I get asked a lot - “Hey John, where do I go to get CE training?” . there are obviously a ton of places to get training, but I wanted to mention our friends at Adeneo Embedded. they are one of our Gold certified partners for Windows Embedded. They offer training and services around Windows CE both in North America and Europe.
As a matter of fact, right now they’ve got a promotion going on that will send a student away with a free ARM based dev kit, to each attendee that attends the course. (it’s valued at $1000)
Olivier Blogs about it here
did I mention that we’ve also now got a CE Certification out there (MCP certification! ). While Adeneo’s class is not the “official” training for the Certification, it will certainly get you a long way. here’s some of the things covered:
Here’s a couple upcoming dates for classes:
February 23rd – 26th 2009 – Paris, France.
February 23rd – 26th 2009 – Los Angeles, CA
Adeneo is offering an early bird discount of 10% if you register by January 26th!
Mike Hall posted in his blog yesterday an article from the NY Times, “Can Microsoft make Windows for a small world?”. While the article is mostly about Windows 7, the notable here for us in Embedded land is that they say we hardly even mention CE anymore… I’m not going to recap the whole post, so go pay Mike’s blog a visit. He is the “Godfather” after all.
My point to this is that we have a ton of shipping devices that run CE as their Operating systems. One of the main pillars we sell the OS under is that you don’t have to tell the world it’s a Windows OS if you don’t want to. hence “embedded” . We spend a ton of time evangelizing it to the world, however we are “Little Windows” both in footprint and number of units. Of course everyone knows about Windows Vista and Windows 7, but not everyone knows about Windows CE. as Mike pointed out, Windows Mobile is based on Windows CE, but they are truly different products. Windows Mobile is a platform – in that you ship a device that is a PDA/Phone, etc… under the hood, they mostly do the same things, or sorts of things. Windows CE is an Operating System – you have complete customization capability, including not even showing the fact that it’s running Windows at all!
Olivier put up a post in his blog with pictures, even of some devices running CE. Another one, not mentioned by either -
Here’s SonoSite’s M-Turbo, a portable handheld ultrasound device – very cool for trauma situations to diagnose internal injuries quickly. Windows CE is in there! We actually did a case study on this one Take a look!
We have lots of other stuff out there too! You’ll be surprised where you see Windows CE pop up! Keep your eyes open, we have lots more to come! It only gets better from here!