Wot u do with .net : MRDS

New releases sneak out

paulfo — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 17:24:09 GMT

While I was travelling last week two new product releases 'snuk' out. Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 and XNS Games Studio 3.0. Both now supporting the VS 2008 products which makes for a more comfortable environment on Vista.

Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio (MRDS) 2008 has some important changes to licensing as well as exciting feature additions. There are three "per-seat" licenses:

Express. Some feature limitations - 64 objects in the simulator, no simulator editor, no VPL compiler, no multi-node VPL and no support for Windows CE! There are no rights granted to distribute the runtime. This is a pretty big list of take backs which is disappointing - although the original Express did not grant runtime distribution either.
Professional. Everything is included, full function and a right to distribute the runtime as much as you like. Cost $499
Academic. As professional except free via the MSDN Academic Alliance scheme.

There is plenty of new stuff go look here for details

In addition to some of the core programming and tools features there are also some new cool simulations. Most of these are included in the Professional edition due to the Express editions 64 entity limit. The Apartment sim is included in Express and gives you a great place to start perfecting your new 'Roomba' navigation algorithm. The Urban simulation provides a 'DARPA Urban Challenge' like environment in which to perfect your autonomous ground vehicle.

All in, running the pro edition, I'm very happy with the new version. Lots of stuff to explore and understand. Lots of opportunities with my current robot projects including delivery of a full release of services for my Whitebox Robotics PC-Bot 914 - called A1-DW. This has been an on going effort challenged mainly by lack of free time.

Microsoft XNA Games Studio 3.0. I haven't got to do a lot of playing with this yet. But two key things stand out for me. Community Games - enabling us to publish our games via the Xbox infrastructure and receive a revenue share with Microsoft - 10million potential customers!! And the ability to program the Zune platform - ok for Europe this is pretty useless at the moment, but one can only hope Zune will make it across the Atlantic at some point and with new control versions that make it more appropriate for game play. I like the idea to build for Zune - I only have an original version and the controls aren't much cop for my normal game genre (action shooters), so one needs to be creative with the game design for Zune.

Download XNA Game Studio 3.0

Over the next month I plan to blog more on my MRDS projects and on XNA 3.0. I'm still new with XNA so plenty to get to explore and I intend to have a lot of fun doing so.

Preparing for The Assembly

paulfo — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:01:19 GMT

I have been lucky enough to get a speaking slot at The Assembly in Finland at the end of the month. 7000 computer hobbyists in one place for four days. Naturally I am talking about robotics! My plan during the session is to show how to build simulated worlds and robots to play in them. This will allow delegates to explore the world of robotics without cost - remember Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio is free for non-commercial use and requires only free runtime downloads from MS including Visual C# Express 2005/8.

However, I'm only speaking for a couple of hours and the event is four days long - although I can only attend for the first two days. So while manning the Microsoft booth I need a few more things to play with.

So, I have been plotting the rebuild of the Wotudo blimp! Today I got the final part - a new 5.8Ghz wireless camera. The camera from Flyonthewall is superb quality! I mashed up a battery connector for it (using a PP3 9V battery) and was able to walk around my garden getting excellent colour images and audio from the camera. My garden is pretty big at 1.1acres, I only got signal interference when line of sight was broken by bushes and trees at about 40metres out, but once line of sight was restored it continued to work very well.

The plan is to use two new blimp balloons and the original blimp gondola with the camera to fly within The Assembly venue. Rather than having the two blimp balloons stacked - as we did at Mashed - I'm hoping we can make more of a 'X-wing' horizontal arrangement with them side by side and the gondola and camera in the middle.

The camera receiver isn't USB so I intend to use my camcorder as the bridging device. This can take a video feed in from the receiver and convert it as required to a USB output which my laptop can use as a web cam. I can then process the feed as I wish - probably using the Volts-IQ visual SDK again to detect faces and other objects. Being 5.8Ghz of course I don't cause interference with Wifi :-)

I also have an iRobot Create to take, and will put the camera onto this also, providing me with a remote camera I can process the feed from, for vision guidance etc. I don't have time to mount a PC on the Create as I intended too, so having it under remote Bluetooth control from a PC and with a wireless vision system is pretty cool to demo and play with. I may take my Lynxmotion 6 Axis arm with me as I can also control this via a wireless mechanism if I plumb the servos into my Devantech servo controller board rather than the servo controller supplied with the arm. Both the controller board and the arm run from batteries, so no real effort required to put this all together. I do need a new micro servo for the gripper as the gears break very easily - something to get ordered I think!!

I think The Assembly is looking pretty cool. I am very excited to be going and to be taking my toys with me!! Although the Sauna in the speaker lounge could be one step to far - even my Stockholm past hasn't prepared me for this ;-). If you are also attending do drop by the MS booth and my seminar to say hi!

Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 CTP July

paulfo — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 23:52:50 GMT

The next CTP of MRDS is out! It has lots of exciting new features and tutorials (take a look at the DSS Log Analyzer - cam view and GPS mapping data example!).

A quick list of highlights:

1. New samples and tutorials: This CTP has many new samples and tutorials including:

1. DSS Node Discovery using UPnP: A new UPnP sample illustrates how to use UPnP for discovering DSS nodes across a UPnP network.

2. Transport Extensibility: PipeTransport and PipeTransportHost are two new tutorials on how to write your own transport and load it in your custom host. In addition you will also find the UdpTransport and UdpTransport as additional transport samples.

3. LINQ: Service Tutorial 12 shows how to subscribe to the Directory Service using a LINQ Filter and how to receive filtered notifications.

4. Silverlight: The XBox Controller Viewer sample shows support for use of interactive Silverlight-based UI

5. Embedded Simulation Environment: The sample EmbeddedSim sample shows how to embed the Visual Simulation Environment in a custom Windows Forms user interface.

6. Simulated Pursuit Camera: The PursuitCamera sample shows how to implement a camera entity that follows behind a target and avoids obstacles.

7. Simulated 4x4-drive: The SimulatedFourByFourDrive sample shows how to implement an entity that behaves like a 4x4 off-road car.

2. Global Assembly Cache: Core CCR and DSS assemblies are put into the Global Assembly Cache. means that they are a shared resource for all installations on a single machine.

3. Simulation on 64-bit machines: Simulation now runs on 64-bit systems using the Microsoft Windows-32-on-Windows-64 (WOW64) subsystem. To use simulation on 64-bit machines, make sure you use dsshost32.exe which forces the WOW64 mode.

4. Visual Studio Project Wizards: The Visual Studio Project Wizards have been rewritten to make it much simpler to create new service projects directly from Visual Studio 2005 and 2008. Project wizards are provided for VB.Net and C# targeting .NET Framework.

5. Much Faster DSS Proxy Generation: The DssProxy tool has been completely rewritten to simplify the generation of service proxy assemblies and to make it much faster to compile services. In addition, the tool chain for writing services for .NET Compact Framework has been simplified to no longer need a companion service project targeting the desktop version of .NET Framework. This makes development for .NET Compact Framework much easier.

6. DSS Log Analyzer: The DSS Log Analyzer is a preview of a powerful new debugging and monitoring tool that can visualize and analyze message exchanges between services sent within a DSS node or across nodes. In addition to showing the actual messages that have been sent it also provides message correlations, time lines, and illustrates how multiple message interactions are causally linked over time.

7. Embedded Visual Simulation Environment: In addition to having a stand-alone UI, the Visual Simulation Environment can now be embedded in other applications. This enables other applications to show the Visual Simulation Environment as part of their application.

See here for more: Welcome to Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 CTP July

Download link here: MS Download

Get prep'ed for Mashed08

paulfo — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:52:49 GMT

I will be showing the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio at Mashed08 this weekend.

If you are also going to be there and fancy playing with robot programming and simulation building there are some bits you can set up on your machine in advanced.

First, get Visual C# Express 2008 (or Std, Pro etc etc)

Then get the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 CTP. You'll note that there is also the latest release you can download (v1.5 - free for non-commercial use ). These two versions do co-exist. There is a lot more free stuff around for V1.5 at the moment so having both may give you some extra options - such as the Volts-IQ Vision SDK 1.6 (which provides the infamous Face detector service).

Now you're ready to rumble. There will be some other goodies to download later - but I'm still working on them :-)

BBC Mashed

paulfo — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:53:00 GMT

Planning on attending the BBC Backstage Mashed event 21st/22nd July Alexander Palace, London? I hope to see you there!

I'll be attending to show off Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio. I'm working on a simulation environment to provide lots of fun for attendees during the 48hr event.

First, in the simulated world will be a number of video screens enabling coders to plug their web services/web site mash-ups into them to create the 'mashed event of the future'.

Next, a simulated Sumo challenge in which sumo robots can be have their strategy behaviours tweaked to deliver the ultimate Sumo Bot. The simulation will allow delegates to compete against each other and will be the Sumo simulation demo available from the Robotics site hosted inside the simulated world.

Additionally, for fun, there will be a variety of simulated robots within the world which delegates can control and program.

For those able to demonstrate a interesting solution combining the simulated world and Microsoft Live Services there will be an MSN USB Missile Launcher (limited number, available on a first come first serve basis!) which if I can manage it will also have programmable services enabling them to become your ultimate desk protector when combined with the Volts-IQ visual recognition services which include object and FACE recognition services :-)

Don't stand still or you'll get fired at.