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Blogs    May 20, 2012

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I now have a rough time line for the book. It should be available around the end of June at the latest beginning of July. The device driver wizard that I mentioned in my article about the new filter drivers model that Windows Embedded Compact 7 supports will accompany the book. This will be a freeware version, while I plan to market the full blown version shortly after that.

Working with Serializer .NET Library and Serializer .NET Robot Controller

Hi All, In this post I will talk about installing the Serializer .NET library and some features os the Serializer .NET Robot Controller developed by RoboticsConnection. The Serializer 3.0 Robot Controller provides a ready-to-use solution to interface the Microsoft™ .NET framework, or C++ applicaitons to the most common robotic hardware. Details about the board can be found here Serializer .NET Robot Controller Here is how we install the .NET library for use in the projects that involve using the Serializer .NET Robot Controller. Note: Although the board is called robot controller it can be used for much mmore than just controlling robots it can be used for numerous other application like, Motor control, Sensor interface, etc. The Serializer™ Library is based on the Microsoft .NET 2.0 Framework. It does not support the use of the .NET 1.1 Framework. So, here we go, Step 1:Download the Download the latest version of the Serializer™ .NET Library Installer from: Serializer .NET Library Step 2:Run the installe ...

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Serial Port Test

Hi all, This is the second text book example from Mr. Samuel Phung's Book.In this section we will develop a Visual Basic based application for testing the serial port on the eBox. The runtime image required for this example remains the same as developed in the previous section, so we can now move on to the application development part. Step 1:Launch the VS2005 IDE. Step 2:From the IDE, select files ► New ► Project to bring up the New Project screen. Step 3:From the New Project screen’s left pane, click on and expand the Other languages node. Step 4:Click on and expand the Visual Basic node followed by the Smart Device node, and click Windows CE 5.0. Step 5:From the New Project screen’s right pane, click Device Application. Step 6:Enter SerialPortApp as the name or any other name of your choice. Step 7:from the New Project screen, click OK to continue. A blank SerialPortApp will be created by the VS2005 IDE. Now by default a blank form is created and we need to add various buttons and boxes to ...

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Pet hates or wishlist for Platform Builder

How can we improve Platform Builder?

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Hello World

Hi All, I hope everyone is familier now with the basic OS development. So, lets start writing applications. This is the first blog in this section so I will take simple application from the book. "Hello World" is the simplest application to get started with application development in windows CE. Step 1:From VS2005 IDE select File/New/Project, to bring up the project screen. Expand Other Languages tab then select and expand Visual C# expand Smart Device and select Windows CE 5.0 on the right hand side select Device Application, choose an appropriate name for the application and click OK. Step 2:Once the new application window is up you can modify the different parameters as per your choice. Resize the Form to a smaller size (320x240) to make it easy to see the application when it runs on CE 6.0. Change the Form caption to “CE 6.0 JumpStart Kit – C# Example” Add a text-box to the form, change the name to textHelloWorld, clear the content in the text-box and place the text-box to the center of the form. ...

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Windows CE 6.0 SDK development

Hello all, This is the last blog in the OS design section, after this I will be moving on to application development. So, here we go with the SDK development. In order to write applications using Visual Studio 2005 and establish a connection to download applications to the eBox-4300 for testing and debug, a CE 6.0 SDK for the OS Design we created in the previous steps is needed. Create and Configure Windows Embedded CE 6.0 SDKFrom VS2005 IDE, select Project | Add New SDK… to bring up the SDK Property Pages screen as shown below. Enter eBox4300_WinCE600_SDK as the name for the SDK. Fill in the company name and company website information. On the left side of SDK Property Page, click on Install and enter MSI folder path and MSI file name on the right side. Use the default path, and enter eBox4300_WinCE600_SDK.msi as the file name. On the left side of SDK Property Page, click on Development Languages and select both Native and Managed development support. Please note its not mandatory to select both native ...

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Downloading OS onto the eBox

Hi All, Today I'll be writing about downloading the OS design onto the eBox. After the runtime image is generated from the OS design, the development station needs to establish connectivity with the target device to download the image to the device. The three common methods of connectivity are (1) Ethernet (2) USB (3) Serial. For our example we will the Ethernet as our connectivity option. This method uses static IP to establish connection with the eBox. Step 1: Configuring the static IP for the eBox-4300All eBoxes are preconfigured to boot to DOS and launches a selection menu with four options, when powered up. The third option, loads the OS image from the development station with static IP 192.169.2.232. In case your device has more than three options select the one that says: Load OS image from development station with static IP 192.168.1.232. The static IP on the eBox can be changed to a different IP address. For doing this, use a text editor to edit the autoexe.bat, located in the eBox 4300’s flash s ...

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OS Customization

Hello All, Last time we left at configuring the OS design wizard. This time we will look at further customizing the OS design, so here we go. After we have finished acknowledging the NDIS User mode I/O Protocol Driver warning the VS 2005 IDE will open. Now we can start with further customizing the OS design. Step 1:on the left hand side of the IDE window you can see the catalog item tab expand the CoreOS and you should be able to see the number of different components. What do these different components do? Expand the Third Party | BSP | ICOP_eBox4300_60CS: x86 followed by the Drivers tab. You can see here some components are already selected. VIA CN/CX Display Driver VIA HD Audio Driver VIA UAM3059 Audio Driver (Unified) You can easily guess what these drivers are for, audio, video, etc. just in case if they are not selected don't forget to select them. Also make sure that you select the ConMan_x86 Files Component This component adds the CoreCon files to the final image, needed to establish connectionb ...

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Windows CE 6.0 OS design wizard

Hello all, My apologies for not posting yesterday, had some issue with my system. In this article I will be talking about the basic OS design. Step 1: Launch a new instance of VS 2005. If the installation is done correctly the IDE should look like this, Step 2: From the IDE select the new project option. Now usually Platform Builder for CE 6.0 is selected by default. In case it is not selected by default, select Platform Builder for CE 6.0. Choose an appropriate name for your project and click OK. Make sure the create directory for solution is clicked. By default your OS design will get stored in the following path “C:\WINCE600\OSDesigns”, is a good practice to leave it in its default setting however if you wish to change it you can. Step 4:After you click OK a new window pops up, this is the Windows Embedded CE 6.0 OS Design Wizard. Click Next. Step 4: At this stage we are required to select the required Board Support Package to create a runtime image for your device. Here we can see that ICOP_eBox4300 ...

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Who would have believed it

I have completed writing the book on developing device driver for Windows CE AKA Windows Embedded Compact. If everything goes right April the book is out.

  1. Re: Using the Kinect Sensor to Calculate Body Segment Angles

    Hey James,this is Sriram and i m working on joint angle sensing using Kinect. Just a small doubt, wh

    --sriram

  2. Re: Using the Kinect Sensor to Calculate Body Segment Angles

    Hey James,this is Sriram and i m working on joint angle sensing using Kinect. Just a small doubt, wh

    --sriram

  3. Re: Using the Kinect Sensor to Calculate Body Segment Angles

    Hey James,this is Sriram and i m working on joint angle sensing using Kinect. Just a small doubt, wh

    --sriram

  4. Re: Kinect motor device driver for WEC 7

    Cool. Did you get it working? I am looking for Kinect drivers for CE

    --maxs

  5. Re: embeddedSPARK 2011 Finalist – KitchenPal project

    @flo: Source code for the Fleux Library has been released. It is available on my other blog (http://

    --gianni

  6. Re: Windows CE 6.0 Webcam Interface

    Hi! thanks a lot for this information. And in general for your post about WinCE, they have been very

    --Charly

  7. Re: Windows 8 Consumer Preview Released for Download

    Hi David, I have the CL900 but the NTrig Touch driver doesn't work. Only the Pen works. Can you tel

    --Jacky

  8. Re: Windows 8 Preview (2): Can't reinstall or wind back to Win7!

    FAILURE! The Win 7 reinstall worked but when I then wentto install Win 8 Preview again as previous

    --David Jones

  9. Re: Windows 8 Preview (2): Can't reinstall or wind back to Win7!

    Note I had tried the inbuilt Win 8 restore features but they falied for my system. It possibly all i

    --David Jones

  10. Re: Windows 8 Consumer Preview Released for Download

    I installed it on my CL900 Pad (Motion Computing). http://www.motioncomputing.com/products/tablet_p

    --David Jones

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