Please join us on June 3rd for the launch of Windows Embedded Standard, the next generation of Windows XP Embedded. At this virtual launch event, you’ll be among the first to learn about the embedded technologies in Windows Embedded Standard and how they further enable next-generation enterprise device scenarios from Microsoft’s General Manager for Windows Embedded Business, Kevin Dallas.
Register today for the Windows Embedded Standard launch webcast and download the Customer Technology Preview starting June 2nd for your chance to win one of 10 Xbox 360 Elites*. For full rules click here.
REGISTER TODAY at www.windowsembedded.com/standardlaunch
It would be good to register and watch the launch just to find out what's happening in the launch video (photos below)...
What exactly is Cuong holding? (and why?)
And who is "Von Piglet" ?
- Mike
Tandy Trower, GM of the Microsoft Robotics team provides an update on what's new in the Robotics Developer Studio CTP (Channel 9 video).
There are a number of interesting updates, including the distributed services node editor - this gives you the ability to create your CCR/DSS based application, built out of services, and then define the physical location of the services on a distributed network and have the Visual Programming Language (VPL) push the application model out to the appropriate network nodes (nodes can be based on Windows XP/Embedded and Windows CE!).
- Mike
Please join experts from the Windows Mobile, Windows CE, SQL Server CE and .NET Compact Framework communities in a chat around application development for smart devices. These chats are a great opportunity to have your questions answered by experts from around the world.
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Join us online for our live interactive developer Q&A Tuesday 13th May at
10 am US Pacific Time
11 am US Mountain Time
12 pm US Central Time
1 pm US Eastern Time
6 pm BST
To convert from GMT to your local time, use the link below:
http://www.worldtimeserver.com/current_time_in_RU-MOW.aspx
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To join the chat use the following link:
http://www.microsoft.com/communities/chats/chatrooms/msdn.aspx
- Mike
Paul Yao is presenting this evenings WE-DIG session, the topic for this evening is "What's new in the .NET Compact Framework 3.5" - if you can't make it to the WE-DIG meeting in person then you can check out the online video up on the MSDN Channel 9 site.
If you are able to make the session, then we're meeting in building 34 on Microsoft main campus (Redmond, WA), room 1001.
- Mike
Building an application for a mobile or embedded device is a different experience to developing on the desktop, you are usually building your application code to target a remote device (rather than running on a desktop PC [although you can of course use the Windows CE or Windows Mobile emulators!]) - One of the advantages of writing managed code (beyond the pure speed of development) is memory management, a typical C/C++ developer needs to be aware of the lifetime of any objects that are created (this includes operating system handles and any custom objects that the developer "new's up". Developers also need to be aware of the overall performance of their application, this is where application profilers come in - Windows CE embedded developers have a number of profiling options, from Monte Carlo operating system profiling through to the Remote Call Profiler for C/C++ (native code) applications.
But what about managed code developers? - EQATEC now have a .NET Compact Framework application call profiler available - go here to get more details.
Here's a video lifted from the EQATEC site (requires flash) that shows the profiler in action.
- Mike
I've received a couple of e-mails from people that have Pico-ITX kits from Embedded Systems West and want to build a custom CE 6.0 operating system image.
The VIA Pico-ITX CE 6.0 BSP is available to download from the VIA site.
- Mike
With the release of Popfly Game Creator Alpha Master Chief needs to find a new job
Popfly: On Set with Halo Master Chief
To get more information on the Popfly Game Creator, go take a look at the Channel 9 video.
- Mike
While waiting for the Starbucks iCup machine to do it's thing I noticed that the stack of cups precisely mirrored the number of bars on my cell phone... spooky!
- Mike
Nicolas Besson is a software engineer working at Adeneo - he's recently posted to his blog three articles on Windows CE Power Management (see below).
- Mike
John Canan, a Program Manager on the MSN Direct team has recently blogged about the end of the MSN Direct Watch, which is based on the .NET Micro Framework technologies.
Here's a quote from John "As of recently, the Smart Watches with MSN Direct have sold out and are no longer for sale," Canan writes. "While we continue to move forward with MSN Direct and seeking out new opportunities for devices that would benefit from the MSN Direct service, we, along with our watch partners, do not have immediate plans to create a new version of the Smart Watch, as we are focused on other areas of our business. We will maintain support of our watch customers and continue to deliver information to the watches, but we do not plan to increase our investment in the watch business going forward."
Note that even though you won't be able to purchase MSN Direct Watches, the .NET Framework team is alive and well and planning their next release.
It's a good job my MSN Direct watch is still able to tell the time!
- Mike
Today the RoboChamps web site goes live - RoboChamps is an extremely interesting competition, you, the developer, get to play with Visual Studio (Express or above), Robotics Developer Studio 2008, and some amazing simulation environments (Maze solving, Mars Rover, RoboChamps City, Rescue Environment, and more).
You will need to program your robot to solve a number of problems - the Maze challenge isn't as simple as finding the exit, the maze contains additional challenges (and traps!) for you to solve or avoid.
The competition is 'virtual', meaning that you don't actually need hardware to get started, all you need is Visual Studio Express (or above), Robotics Developer Studio 2008 (the CTP is available now), and the RoboChamps Competition downloads (which includes the simulation environment).
Even though the competition is 'virtual', the finals of the competition will be held live, at the PDC in October, with real hardware! - and if you are planning on going to TechEd 2008 look out for the RoboChamps booth in the exhibition hall.
There are plenty of tutorials to jump start your competition entry. So what are you waiting for? - stop reading this blog page and go and sign up! http://www.robochamps.com
- Mike
Last month, Ray Ozzie talked about "the mesh" at MIX 08, today the Live Mesh Technology Preview is available and there's a lot of discussion going on about what Live Mesh is, and the problem that Live Mesh is trying to solve.
Here's my take on Live Mesh, and there are a bunch of links below (start with Amit Mital's blog post) - We live in a world where we use a growing number of devices, these can be PCs, laptops, mobile phones, or embedded systems such as photo frames, portable navigation devices, and more. There is often a need to share data between these devices, and have that data up to date no matter which device you are using - this is where Live Mesh comes in - you, the user, add devices to your mesh, these devices can then synchronize data between each other. There is of course a whole lot more to it than simply file/folder sharing - take a look at the links and video below to get more information.
Ray Ozzie on Channel 9 Amit Mital’s blog post Channel 10 Live Mesh blog Live Mesh architecture Live Mesh - An Early Look for Developers
Hands on with Live Mesh
- Mike
A typical morning in the office gets started with browsing my Outlook Inbox for questions about Windows Embedded tools and technologies and replying to any questions that have come in overnight, this usually consumes ~30 minutes.
This morning wasn't any different, I had a number of inbound e-mails asking questions about Windows CE, Windows XP Embedded, application development, dependency resolution etc...
The first question was asking about ASP.NET support on Windows CE - I quickly typed up the response (see below), and hit "Send", within seconds the e-mail bounced, moving onto the second question, that also bounced. Something strange is going on today...
And then I checked my Inbox... Hmmm...
So, to answer the question about ASP.NET support on Windows CE - Windows CE does not support ASP.NET directly, the Web Server that ships with Windows CE does support ASP, ISAPI, and native code (ATL/COM object) XML Web Services - those clever chaps over at OpenNETCF do have an implementation of ASP.NET running on Windows CE that they call Padarn
- Mike
I seem to be getting quite a number of questions related to CE 6.0 and Visual Studio 2005/2008 - so here's the story...
Developers building Windows CE based devices fall into one of two groups, you are either an operating system developer, or an application developer (and yes, you could be both).
1. Operating System Developer.
For the operating system developer, the CE 6.0 development tools are a plug in to Visual Studio 2005 - the Full CE 6.0 product ships with a full version of Visual Studio 2005 - The CE 6.0 development tool (Platform Builder) gives you the ability to configure, build, download, and debug your custom operating system image. Platform Builder also gives you the ability to write Win32 (C/C++) applications, or DLLs (where the DLL can export functions shared between applications, resource only DLLs, or the DLL could be a device driver in the operating system image).
Operating system developers need Visual Studio 2005, and the CE 6.0 development tools.
2. Application Developer.
Application developers typically don't need access to the underlying operating system development tools, the application developer codes against a "platform". For native code developers (Win32, MFC, *TL), this means that you code against a Windows CE Platform SDK - since you are a native code developer this means that you are calling the Win32 APIs on the operating system directly (MFC is a thin wrapper over Win32) - Since Windows CE is a componentized operating system the exact APIs exposed from a customized "platform" are determined by the embedded operating system developer.
Once a Windows CE configuration is complete, the embedded o/s developer builds a custom SDK (Software Development Kit) that defines the exposed APIs for that specific platform (through header files and libraries). This SDK can then be shared with application developers who install the SDK into Visual Studio 2005 and/or Visual Studio 2008.
The native code developer codes against the custom platform SDK.
Managed code developers have a slightly easier time - the .NET Compact Framework *defines* the underlying platform APIs, when you add the compact framework to a platform configuration a set of operating system dependencies automatically gets added to the platform - as a managed application developer you know that the .NET class libraries are there - if you want to escape the box (platform invoke) then you need to know which native code APIs exist for your specific platform.
Application developers can choose to develop using Visual Studio 2005 OR Visual Studio 2008.
- Mike
At the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose last week the "Spark your Imagination" program was launched - This gives non-professional developers (ok, so you might be a professional developer by day, but just like Clark Kent have an embedded hobbyist developer inside you just waiting to get out) access to low cost hardware, and the software development tools you need to build/debug/deploy custom Windows CE operating system images, and the application development software (Visual Studio 2005) to write applications for the embedded operating system (or desktop, or server, or database, or whatever).
Five hardware companies are taking part in the program, including Advantech, Icop, Via, Special Computing, and Keith and Koep more information about the hardware can be found here.
So, what do you really think about this program? - and what do you think you would build with your hardware and Windows CE ? - drop me a comment below, I'm very interested to find out what you think about this.
If you have one of the VIA Pico-ITX boards from ESC West, or have purchased a board as part of the Spark program then drop me a comment to let me know what you are going to do with the board.
- Mike