TechDays France day 1 is over. This event is huge!!
Microsoft France offers this unique developers and ITPros free event once a year and they manage to gather LOTS of professional in Paris over 3 days: last year they had something like 16,000 entrances over the 3 days… something like 11,000 unique attendees. This year they seem to be on the way to do even better.
I was presenting a Windows Embedded demos session this morning and it was packed… interesting to see how people are interested into Embedded technologies, asking really pertinent questions. It seems people are more and more understanding what Embedded is even if they evolve in a different domain. They realize devices are part of their life and will more and more be.
The booth was also really busy all day and we got a lot of interest into all the devices that were showcased. I’ll try to post some pictures tomorrow
Do you know Charles Fleischer? No, really? He is the voice of Roger Rabbit! Check out this great presentation, or should I say performance, he made at TED talk in 2005 and that was republished recently, you will not be deceived. He is talking about serious topics such as astronomy and mathematics in a really… particular way. The best in that is that the Mathematic part of it makes sense!
A lot to learn to make a presentation more… fun :-)
Round 1 of the embeddedSPARK competition ended last week and the 75 contestants moving to Round 2 were announced this week. In Round 1, each contestant had to submit a paper detailing their idea for a project related to the “Fun and Games” theme. You cannot imagine the craziness going on there... The imagination some guys have sometimes keeps me speechless…
In Round 2, they will have to develop their ideas into a working prototype. The top 3 entries from Round 2 will go on to compete live on stage at ESC Silicon Valley during Kevin Dallas’ keynote.
Check out he list of round 1 winners: http://www.embeddedspark.com/forum.aspx?g=posts&t=184
I think one of my favorites is the Missing Link robo-tail!
From kiosks to point-of-sale or digital signage, embedded devices surround you when you are shopping. The retail devices are more and more connected and more and more “intelligent”, able to adapt to the customer using it, able to access inventories easily, able to report a maintenance need. Not only shoppers get a better experience, but retailers sell more :-).
In a previous post you have seen a video showing an Intel proof of concept of a digital signage device. Here is another one the Windows Embedded team put together to illustrate what I am talking about: the new retail experience.
Since DOS, Microsoft technologies have been widely used in the retail industry for different reasons: compatibility with the Enterprise infrastructure and PC world, manageability, vast existing ecosystem,… Windows Embedded brings the scalability, adapted licensing, componentization, better security and manageability,… not surprising this industry uses it: see this video from Kiosk.com event.
![ford-2010107-600-16[1]](http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/obloch/WindowsLiveWriter/Incartechnologyofthefuturenotsofarawayfr_83D7/ford-2010107-600-16%5B1%5D_thumb.jpg "ford-2010107-600-16[1]")
A lot of in-car technologies have been demonstrated at CES this year. In a very near future you will get multiple screens, fully voice- and touch- controlled infotainment systems, you will access online services to do search, navigation, social networking and so on… Check out this Engadget post.
I think on of the most interesting part of this is that these new equipments will not be only for higher trends vehicles only. They are coming to more affordable vehicles… which opens a new market: what about having some sort of appstore for your car infotainment system?
This is more than just fantasy. Ford announced MyFord and MyLincoln, and want to build on top of their successful SYNC system (running Microsoft Auto). They are starting to build a new app ecosystem. To learn more about this, read this post. You can also have a look at this video (want to access Pandora service in your car controlling everything by voice?)
Kia Motors has also been announcing UVO, that will be available soon in cars. See this video presenting this new infotainment system (running Microsoft Auto too :-)). BTW Greg is my new boss ;-)
By the way, if you don’t know, Microsoft Auto is based on Windows Embedded CE.
Nice MID running Windows Embedded CE:the Toshiba JournE.
This emerging category is really interesting. Current technologies allow great user experience on devices now. Let’s hope we will get more and mote of these ones as I find it really cool to be able to access your digital media and social networks on this kind of screens (I am sure my eyes and my back are suffering from me doing everything on my HTC Touch HD phone, even if this one has a great screen…).
I just got one for testing… I will get back to you on this :-).
Some links: http://socialnews.toshiba.co.uk/?ReleaseID=13453
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/09/03/the-journe-in-all-its-wince-glory/
Arghhhh, I just spent 2 hours on trying to figure out why I had my sysgen process would fail really early… And when looking at the error.log file (located in C:\WINCE600) I could just see this kind of messages:
Res2Res: ERROR: Line: 267 File: c:\ce\tools\ostools\wincetools\rescommon\checksum.cpp
Didn’t make more sense… But after investigation (2 LONG hours!!), I noticed that some of the processes used in the build process of Platform BUilder (res2res.exe was the one causing problem to me) had been identified as a virus threat by my anti-virus system. I excluded the full C:\WINCE600 folder from the virus scan and now everything works smoothly.
Beckhoff is a well know player of the Industrial Automation industry. They have been providing Microsoft based Real Time and Industrial Automation solutions for over 10 years and are brilliantly sticking to the latest innovations and enhancements of the PC world.
Beckhoff just announced the future release of TwinCat 3, an “eXtended Automation” version of its real-time machine control software introduced in 1996. The package will be ready for a Beta release at Hannover Fair 2010, and as a full product by the end of 2010.
The key features of this release are:
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All Industrial Automation tools integrated into VS2010
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Possibility to code C++ for cyclic logic – also the traditionally PLC languages are integrated into VS2010
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New custom native code debugger for Visual Studio that enables debugging applications running within the Beckhoff real-time runtime environment
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The real-time runtime environment executes industrial automation applications on WinXP/Win7/WinCE in kernel mode.
The debugger is capable of debugging these applications without using WinDbg.
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Breakpoints and variable monitoring are already implemented
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A online watch window enables variable monitoring while the application is running (not only while stopping on a breakpoint)
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Customers can implement deterministic runtime modules in different languages (C++ / PLC languages / Mathlab-Simulink ..) - each module can call whatever other module
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Each module can be configured to run deterministically on specific CPU cores (supporting up to 255 cores today!)
To learn more about this announcement, read this.
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« I see Windows Everywhere » … the first dedicated French student and hobbyist contest on Windows Embedded Technologies !
MS France Windows Embedded and Visual Studio teams announced the first application development contest for students using Visual Studio tools and Windows Embedded platforms, to be showcased at TechDays Paris, an event which attracts 16,000 developers.
The contest will feature 3 categories :
- Automation : my home, my robot, my fridge …
- See , Show and Touch : Screens, Multimedia systems, Kiosks , Interactive gaming devices , Digital Signage …
- Embed , Move and have fun : my car, my bicycle, my skateboard with an engine …
Our Windows Embedded MVP community will be hosting the students for 3 days on the Development Zone of the Techdays exhibition, to coach them on their projects, and help them test their application on the ICOP ebox.
Microsoft France Board members, Windows Embedded Evangelists and representatives from our media partner on the contest Développez.com will nominate the winners during the Techdays France event on February 8TH to 10th. Winners of each category will be rewarded an Ebox & 1 MSDN Embedded subscription, with also plenty of cool prizes for all participants, which will all be given away during a student night event.
Check-out this web page for more ( in French obviously !! )
By the way I will be at Techdays in Paris to present a “only demos” session… look forward to it! Meet you there!
Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 provides support for Silverlight for Windows Embedded. This means you can build Silverlight User Interfaces for your Windows CE devices. Silverlight for Windows Embedded is different to the Web version of in the way you program for it. While for the Web you use XML and .Net, for the Windows Embedded version you will you XAML and C++, no need for .Net.
You can find more details about this feature in previous posts.
Here is a demo that has been showed recently that highlights the type of UI you can build. I don’t read or speak Korean, still the video is interesting :-). If you do read Korean, I recommend this blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/popcon. This demo is a prototype, reason why you still see the Windows Shell and the taskbar, but obviously on a release device you would not even have any sort of Windows Shell in your build, the media application would be the shell in this case. This has been developed really rapidly and all the design has been done using Expression Blend.
Follow the link…
Are you interested in having NTFS support in Windows Embedded CE? As you might now there has been no support for NTFS file system in Windows Embedded CE. A third party company called Tuxera offers this support now. See this article on Windowsfordevices.com.
Is this a feature you would use? I am really interested in your feedback.
In my last post I talked a little about a nice POC built by Intel and running Windows Embedded. Here is a video
What about having digital signage to be more interactive, intuitive, adapted to the one who is standing in front of it? You would walk in front of these panels and they will display the exact products you are looking for, they will locate the products in the store for you, they will let you search and learn more about the products available in the store, they send you coupons on your phone …
Intel and Windows Embedded have been working on a Proof of Concept that is displayed at the National Retail Federation show on the Windows Embedded booth this week. The joined efforts have been announced by press today and are really promising. Check the PR here.
Digital signage is definitively a vertical that can benefit from Windows Embedded technologies, not only for the variety of Embedded OSs of the catalog, but also because of the integration into Microsoft broader technologies. Who says Digital Signage obviously says server access for media streaming, security management, deployment of updates, and so on… Microsoft offers mature and reliable technologies in the server field that are more and more used in the retail industry and devices can now be more easily integrated into enterprise Network infrastructures thanks to Windows Embedded.
This surely not is the last digital signage proof of concept or product running Windows Embedded technologies that we’ll see out there!
Johan Arwidmark, one of our valuable Embedded MVPs has struggled with sysprep and the eval version of Windows Embedded Standard 2009. While using sysprep on a WES 2009 eval image to experience some deployment scenario, he was getting an error in the mini-setup and his Windows Embedded OS would reboot into hang. After lots of investigations and interaction with Microsoft support, he figured out that there was an issue with the Product ID he entered into sysprep.inf.
When you get an eval version of Windows Embedded Standard 2009, you receive a PID for the tools, but Microsoft does not provide a runtime Product ID for the images you will build with the tools. By default, when you build a WES 2009 image using Target Designer and you don’t enter a PID for your runtime in the configuration of your image, this image will time bomb. And this is the expected behavior for eval builds.
The problem is that sysprep requires a valid runtime PID to be entered in the sysprep.inf file. Johan posted a solution here, explaining how to find the eval runtime PID (there is one set by the tools by default that is an eval runtime PID). You can find it after your WES image has been installed (ran through FBA) on the target running regedit under:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\WindowsEmbedded\RunTimePID
Copy this PID into your sysprep.inf file and sysprep the image!
Thanks Johan!
Here is a great Channel 9 video: a bunch of Windows Embedded Standard developers are interviewed about what WES is about, how it fits into the Windows Embedded family of products, where Microsoft is heading to with this componentized, embedded version of Windows…
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Charles/Windows-Embedded-Past-Present-and-Future/
