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Global Azure Bootcamp Rome 2018

Mon, 23 Apr 2018 07:05:00 GMT

Global Azure Bootcamp Rome 2018

After a long time I miss to post on the blog, today I want to restart write about what I'm interested and enjoyed to do: Community and share knowledge!

Last Saturday I was in Rome as a speaker in one of the 280 worldwide site of Global Azure Bootcamp

As usual for this type of Community-driven events, I was excited and thrilled at the same time. The venue was huge! Just inside the biggest train station in Rome (Stazione Termini), we shared the space offered by LuissEnlabs, one of the biggest Italian startup accelerator. The coordination was managed by Codemotion/Aperitech a community and company involved in developer event in Europe.

But the real organizers was 4 local communities I know very well: DomusDotNet, DotNetPodcast, DotNetCodeIT, DotNetAbruzzo that had worked very hard to organize this event.

I know most of the speaker there, most of them are MVP or just friend coming from other communities around Italy.

The spirit, the involvement and the climate that was breathing at the event were incredible. I've got back home very tired but with a great energy.

I love the #Community, I love sharing the knowledge and I hope to be back on stage at another event very soon.

Just a last note: the session I hosted in Rome was about How to Deploy Azure IoT Edge on a real board, but obviously I don't miss to talk about Azure Sphere that's just the news of last week.

My Slides are available here:

Below some images of my speech and the event.

Great Project and personal satisfaction

Tue, 07 Feb 2017 12:50:29 GMT

It’s almost an year from the start of a project with my two “pards” Marco Minerva and Riccardo Cappello, we named it: See4Me.

It’s an open source Community driven project that use the power of Azure Cognitive Services inside a mobile App or a wearable device helping vision impaired people to “see” what’s around him.

We already create the three version of the App using UWP and Xamarin, also published on WIndows Store and Apple Store.

On the UWP side, we’ve the bonus that the same exact application that run on PC or Mobile, can run smoothly also on Windows10 IoT Core devices with no changes.

With this in mind we start to design a prototype for a wearable device that can be used without restrictions from every blind person.

The first device we build is a little “rudimentary”, but it just works, and essentially its curious form factor create a general hype around it.

But obviously that type of device can’t be used for our final scope. For that reason I started designing a small board that can be included inside a small box, or in glasses.

I’ve designed keeping in mind to continue to use our original UWP application, and, for that reason we need a board that can support WIndows10 IoT Core. I’ve choose to use an Intel Joule SOM module as “brain” of my solution reducing the need of further connection or interfaces on the carrier board.

During the design period, I found that Gumstix promoted a worldwide contest about the design of new boards based on the Joule platform.

I immediately decide to participate with my design, and, with my big surprise I WIN!

For me is a big personal success, also because I’m not a so strong PCB designer.

Now our next step are about to start to show the new device, and start thinking seriously to build it “for real”!

Good news for the Windows Enterprise Mobile Devices

Wed, 28 Dec 2016 17:30:06 GMT

As you already know very well, in my experience and day by day work I’m also developing application for the Enterprise Mobile Devices.

In my (long) story I practically used every kind of device with a version of Windows Mobile, Pocket PC, Windows CE etc. OS.

But the longest experience I’ve done is with a specific brand, that is also one of the biggest and more important on the market: Zebra (more often known as Symbol or Symbol Motorola, during the years it change name a couple of time).

In the last year many brands continued to use Windows Embedded Handheld 8 and 8.1 powered devices but till now Zebra don’t officially announce devices wit “our” OS.

Today I accidentally discovered that Zebra has now a Windows 10 IoT Enterprise device available: the TC70!

The device is on the market from some time with an Android distribution, but recently (October 2016) there’s also a new version powered by WIndows 10.

It’s the version of windows related to WIndows Phone/ Windows 10 Mobile in the version IoT Enterprise (specific SKU for this type of devices).

I’ve immediately asked my supplier to know the price of the device, but for now I don’t reach this information. I’ll update this post when more news will be available.

What to say next? It’s arrived!!!!!!

How to install Windows 10 IoT Core on Intel Joule

Wed, 09 Nov 2016 22:06:36 GMT

During the last Intel® IDF in San Francisco, the Intel Joule board was presented supporting 3 different OS BSP: Ostro, Ubuntu and Windows 10 IoT Core.

For the first two OS the images was published at IDF time. For Windows 10 IoT Core the public image and support has published in mid October.

As all the other Windows 10 IoT Core images for other supported boards, the distribution is located in an unique site:

www.WindowsOnDevices.com .

I'll try to graphically describe the step by step procedure that Microsoft publish to prepare and flash the board.

I’m writing this because I hear some concern from some persons to follow and understand all the spets involving this procedure, for this reason I’m creating a full “coloured book” of the installation procedure.

The previous link show the following page:

Clicking on “Get Started” reach the page:

Selecting the Joule icon you’ll see the Step 2 and click next.

You’ll now reach the page with the full list of operation to do specifically for Joule, that I’m actually trying to explain. (This is the page direct link )

Now the step will not essentially be very fast to follow, in some case we could have to install something before approach the next step.

You’ll need a PC with WIndows10 (version 1607 o later) installed.

Open a CMD shell from start button and type the command:

winver as in picture:

On this PC you have to install the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit

In my case I have to install the 1607 version as the previous winver command tell me.

When the setup of WADK is done we can continue with the next steps, first of all restart the PC.

Note that the previous installation create in your Windows installation some new folder under “Program FIles” and specifically (in case of standard installation) “Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\”.

Following the instruction in this article, create a bootable WinPE USB key referring to the amd64 version (the joule install a x64 version of Windows10).

Then from the Intel Download center get the zip file with a couple of important script we’ll need later.

Save the JouleInstaller.zip file locally on your PC and unpack it. Then copy the JouleInstaller.cmd file in the root of the WinPE USB key.

Now it’s time to download the image of Windows10 IoT Core for our Joule from this link. Obviously the current version could have a release version greather than the one in figure (Microsoft release the insider preview images also for IoT Core)

Once selected the version click “Confirm”, in the next menu select that you want downlad the Joule distribution and click “Confirm” again.

The page will generate a temporary download link for your selection. CLick on “Download Now” and save the ISO file locally on your PC.

When the download has done, double click on the ISO file in order to mount and open it.

When the virtual DVD unit will open double click on the “Windows 10 IoT Core for Broxton” file. When the setup has done, under “\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft IoT\FFU\Broxton” folder you’ll find the Flash.FFU file representing the real OS image.

It’s now time to copy this file in the WinPE USB key, we’re almost ready to get our Joule board and start working on it.

Let’s get you Intel Joule board, aand the following:

-12V, 3A power adapter (power adapter must be Listed LPS or Class 2 output rated, 12Vdc, 3A minimum) with barrel jack for powering the expansion board. The barrel dimensions are 5.5mm outer diameter, and 2.1mm inner diameter. The barrel length is ~9-10mm. The plug is positive center.
-Micro HDMI cable and monitor
-POWERED USB 3.0 hub. The development platform has only one Type A USB port. The Type B and C ports should not be used unless directed.
-USB keyboard and mouse.

All these are needed to boot the board, run into the BIOS, change some parameters and then boot into Windows CLI interface in order to flash the OS image inside the board.

First of all, we’ve to check which firmware version is installed on our board and eventually update it from the Intel Software page.

Considering the number of board actually distributed, we can easily consider to have an updated version of it and skip to the next step.

Connect, the USB hub with keyboard and mouse, insert the hdmi cable, plug the power adaptor and start the board.

When the board boot-up press the F2 button on the keyboard to enter the BIOS (if you miss it, restart the board and retry).

You probably see a screen like the following:

Using the cursor keys scroll to “Device Manager” and press Enter,

From the following menu choose, System Setup and press Enter,

In the next screen select Boot

From the OS Selection option press enter and choose between the option “Windows” and confirm with enter.

Pressing F4 you’ll be asked to save the changes and reboot the board.

Remember to put the WinPE USB Key in the USB Hub before reboot the board (the system will “see” the boot key at next start).

At following boot, press F2 again to enter BIOS, select in sequence: “Boot Manager” and in the next screen EFI USB Device. Pressing Enter the board will reboot.

Let the board boot from the USB Key.

The boot will stop in a Command prompt window, there you have to type “C:” to change the active unit where is mapped the USB key (usually C: or D: )

From there type the command: “JouleInstaller.cmd” and Enter. This script will flash the OS in the internal eMMC (the operation will show a percentage advancing till the end of the operation)

At the end of the flashing operation th prompt will return to the original drive.

Type “WPEUTIL reboot” to restart the board.

The next boot sequence provide the first configuration for the system.

OK, now you are running Windows 10 IoT Core on your Intel Joule!

A Busy autumn

Mon, 19 Sep 2016 07:02:11 GMT

I return to blog after a long time, In the last period I’ve used mostly the classic Social Network (specially Twitter and Facebook) for my tech related content. I’m still thinking about what’s better for my specific interest. Until I’ll take a final decision, I’m here to write down about the next month.

In my case there will be a lot of conference, events and meetings to speech, mentor or train developers about some of the technologies I love more.

Here’s a brief list:

Set 26th Sep 30th Microsoft Ignite in Atlanta (GA) two session related on Windows IoT, Cognitive Services, Intel IoT and RealSense.

Oct 6th – Oct 7th Microsoft Future Decoded Milan, one session on IoT, Cognitive Services, Xamarin

Oct 14th – Oct 16th Makerfaire Rome, Demos and Q&A at Intel Booth, one session on Intel IoT and RealSense Technologies.

Oct 21st EtnaDev Catania One session on Natural User Interfaces and new devices

Nov 25th, 26th Codemotion Milan one session on Hololens

I could probably be present to some other local Community event around Italy, but I don’t have all the dates, I’ll update this post as soon I will know dates and location.

See you around!

Our rover at /Build 2016

Fri, 08 Apr 2016 10:04:07 GMT

This year (as every year) I went to Build conference in San Francisco.

The annual Conference of the developers of the Microsoft world where usually has presented the latest news and trends of the various technologies and products.

For me the real news for this year was the opportunity to present a project developed together with my community colleague Marco Minerva at the IoT Team booth in the Expo area of the Conference.

The project in question is our rover that we developed to test the potential of Windows 10 IoT Core.

I got a chance to show the rover operating around the booth and to explain its structural and functional characteristics

Recently we've presented to some conferences here in Italy, while in the coming weeks we will get to the Netherlands to show features in a session at IoT Tech Day.

I want to publicly thank the IoT team for opportunity given to me and in particular Ale Contenti for the help and support.

Below some pictures taken during the demo.

How to get working Windows Hello on actual Insider Preview (and RTM)

Fri, 10 Jul 2015 21:23:00 GMT

Update: the following article remain valid for the RTM (release to Manufacturer) version of Windows* 10. In the days following the release of July 29th some little issues has raised relating to the return from Standby where the camera was not restarted correctly and the recognition function don't work. The solution is in the updated version of DCM (rel 1.4.27.41944 ) that you can find in IDZ site or directly in download center.

The new package contains updated firmware for F200 camera and new driver in order to solve the issue.

Just one more thing, keep attention if you are using also the Realsense SDK on your PC because after the DCM update you need to refer the Realsense App to the device named Realsense 3D Vitual Driver and not the other two (RGB and depth) otherwise the app will crash. Refer to release note of DCM for more on this.

One of the cool new features announced for the upcoming WIndows10 is Windows Hello.

It's essentially a new way to login in the system with an exclusive face recognition feature that auto log the user when it come in front of its PC.

How it works

This magic feature is based on a magic technology that tag a face and can recognize it back securely.

The recognition is done using two type of camera in cooperation; the first is a classical HD camera and the second is a depth camera (infrared) for 3D an temperature scanning.

The system recognize and match a lot of point describing specific target of the face, the eyes, the lips, the nose etc; describing a precise path different for each person and assigning to this array of points a specific and unique tag.

When the system come in non-logged state it automatically try to recognize the face coming behind it and matching with the one archived for the local Windows Hello, if a match is done it auto log to the corresponding user profile.

On the Windows10 side the game is done by Passport that log you to the system (using the PIN password) only when the biometric device (in this case the camera) acknowledge the recognition of you face; it works essentially in the same manner on all the device with a fingerprint reader embedded. The system already manage also the retina scan login, but you will obviously need a specific retina scan device.

Obviously it doesn't work with photo, or miniature of the face.....

What whe need to get it work

Actually there's only one standalone device certified for Windows hello, the Intel Realsense camera F200.

It's a 3D camera part of a Intel Dev Kit Developed by Intel named Realsense SDK: this SDK is a big set o free library to enable feature like Face recognition, face detection, object tracking, gesture recognition, speech synthesys and speech recognition. You can freely download it from this link.

Otherwise you need a device with a Realsense camera onboard (click here for a full list).

You only need a device running Windows 10 (the Insider Technical preview also).

How to do it

Connect the camera to you Win 10 device, the system will automatically recognize some new devices

In order to install the new available driver and eventualy update the formware of the camera we need to download and install the "Intel RealSense Depth Camera Manager (DCM)" software from Intel at this link.

After the download install and run it, follow instruction to update driver and firmware of the camera.

For the next step go to Windows 10 Settings/Accounts/Sign In options and define PIN password.

Once defined it close and reopen Settings /Accounts/Sign-in options you'll see also a Windows Hello option!

Click on Set Up, press Get Started, the system will ask for you PIN password, enter it and a preview of the image captured from the F200 camera will appear.

Once the operation end succesfully the system will show the message AllSet!

Close the window and try immediately to sign out from actual session.

When the system return to the login page will immediately recognize you (if you are still in front of your PC obviously) and auto login in your profile.

Thats it!

Enjoy

Back from MWC Barcelona: and now?

Fri, 06 Mar 2015 12:56:31 GMT

During this week I attend the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, where most of the mobile ecosystem go to present its new products or strategies for the year.

I don’t try to realize a sort of reportage because everyone can find a good coverage for this event online.

My interest is to go deeper on what Microsoft present during its Monday morning keynote and in the following event where some detail about Windows 10 development was revealed.

Universal App Platform

In order to develop for WIndows 10 we’ll use a new Visual studio project template named Universal App Platform that take name and inspiration from the actual Universal App available for Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1.

The main difference in this new kind is that we don’t have 3 different projects in the solution (one for the Windows 8 part, one for the WP and a shared project that own all the common part of the code behind, UI and resources.

The new UAP project has only one project that cover the app development for all the platform available for Win10, from the IoT devices to the big screen, xbox, HoloLens and comprising Windows phone, tablet etc.

We can surely affirm “one project to rule them all” (cit.)

In the new project we can manage every different type of screen size, dimension and layout using some new features showcased only at the local event in Barcelona that essentially permit to realize Adaptive UX.

You can find an extensive description of what that event content was in this post from Matt Lacey.

The essence of all this announcements are:

Start to convert your old app in universal in order to run it on Win10
Subscribe the Insider Program to test Win10 on PC and phone
Follow Build conference from April 29

The most important is the first: “Start to convert your application to Universal” in case you have developed Silverlight applications for Windows Phone it’s now the time to start to port it to universal so that you’ll be ready to publish it on day 1 in the new Win10 store.

Keep in mind that the new UAP type app will be deployed on all the platform in a single click! No need to have n different binary package for every device to address.

And finally it’s here!

Thu, 27 Nov 2014 13:01:41 GMT

After a (Very) long wait, today I receive the first REAL WIndows Embedded Handheld 8.1 device.

It’s a Bluebird BM180 in the version Barcode Reader and MSR Reader but no 3G radio.

Obviously it have WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC etc.

I’m actually charging and configuring it. In the next days I’ll write a complete “test drive” using some of the enterprise app I’ve developed.

For now I can only confirm: it exist!

Pay attention! If you install Nokia Recovery tool you’ll lost the project my video on WP8.1

Sat, 26 Apr 2014 14:40:00 GMT

In these days I’ve participated at an event where I have to host some session about developing on WP8.1.

Obviously I’m counting to use Project my video feature finally available for all the device WP8.1.

In the week before I’ve tested it and work ok, unfortunately when I arrive to the venue and test if everything is ok for the sessions I see that the projection doesn’t work.

After all the test of uninstall drive, remove the device from Device and printers, uninstalled and reinstalled the Projection app with no luck about the feature, I start to think about what other could be the reason for that problem.

I remember the installation of Nokia Recovery Tool for reflashing a Lumia 820 and I start to think the cause of my problem will possibly stay there.

Going under the hood I find that the recovery tool install a driver package that overwrite the standard device driver for WP on WIndows, in order to enable the low level acces to the device.

I’ll then uninstall Recovery tool and all the connected package, removed the driver and device, reinstalled the projection tool et voila’! It work!

So pay great attention if you need to use that tool.

Windows Embedded 8 Handheld SDK is available

Sun, 15 Dec 2013 13:11:19 GMT

Windows Embedded Handheld 8 SDK is finally available, and you can download and install it from here .

But I want to make order out of what actually is this SDK and what role plays in the market.

Windows Embedded Handheld 8 is part of the Embedded family of products offered by Microsoft, in particular, the handheld version is already available from many years and in fact is the product formerly known as Windows Mobile smartphones that Microsoft was offering at that time. Still distributed on devices from all the main companies in the industrial sector (Symbol-Motorola, Honeywell, Intermec, Datalogic and so on).

Handheld version 8 instead is a breaking change with the past and the new system will abandon Windows Mobile (based on Windows CE kernel) and will be based on Windows Phone 8.

This change of direction pointing towards the alignment and unification of the platforms also in the embedded world.

The new OS should see the light in the next year (the latest official news refer the first half of 2014), and is close to the expected timing of the vNext release of Windows Phone (commonly known as Windows Blue).

But what will be the by main feature?

First of all, the presence of new sensors on the devices and interfaces, such as barcode readers, magnetic card readers, support for connecting to HID devices (via Bluetooth and USB)
The ability to set the so-called "kiosk mode", which can set an application as the sole or main and inhibit access to some or all of the other features of the operating system from the user interface. In this way we can "lock down" the use of the device is programmed to only functionality (typically operations and retrieve data collection, logistics, distribution, retail and hospitality).
Deploy applications on the device without passing by the store (possibility formerly known as Enterprise publishing applications)
Remote management of devices using Windows Intune management systems or third-party devices

Installation

How to install the SDK?

start downloading the installation package (about 460 MB).

The installation ends quickly if there is already a development environment for Windows Phone 8 (either on VS2012 or VS2013).

The first visible trace of the SDK presence is when we create or open a project Windows Phone 8 and note the in list of available emulators some new entry. All highlighted by the name "WE8H Emulator" and followed by the appropriate screen size emulated.

My attention was especially on a new measure corresponding to the new 1080p resolution, available from the GDR3 update of Windows Phone (for full HD devices such as the Nokia Lumia 1520) on this argument take a look at this interesting post on how to manage multiple resolutions in the new devices.

An initial test carried out with a small sample application, however, reveal that by using this emulator you can’t test the Full HD resolution device, in fact, the scale factor returned from its API is 150, while the resolution camera shutter 7152 × 5364 is exactly the values that are also returned by the 720p emulator. Here is the snippet I used.

Later on I’ll investigate on this argument.

The SDK documentation ( available at this link ) cover the two namespaces Windows.Device.PointOfService and Microsoft.Embedded.Devices.Enumeration added by the SDK and an example to emulate the barcode reader within the emulator.

In practice, it is now possible to use on WP8 the Point of Service API already available in Windows 8.1, obviously considering developing for the device WE8H.

How to detect if an headset is plugged

Sun, 15 Sep 2013 00:22:00 GMT

Some time ago, a friend who is working on a big WP8 project, asked me for a method to detect when the headphone jack is plugged or unplugged from the device, given that apparently there were no API to do this.

I also do not know the answer and not even my internet searches give any success.

My first idea was to use the FM radio API to measure signal strength, as the headset is used as an antenna for the radio synth, I thought that the presence of plug in device would increase the level of the received signal.

I did some experiment with FMRadio.Instance.SignalStrength by measuring the strength change plugging and unplugging an headset.

But this simply cannot work with first generation WP8 (til the GDR1 update) did not have access to FM radio API and simple an exception is generated when the radio is istantiated.

I test the method with WP7 device, but the variations in the signal strength were not so relevant to determine the presence or absence of the headset.

I have conducted similar tests on device WP8 with GDR2, but the results were the same.

When I understand that this approach can’t solve the problem, I start a new search in WP8 API and found that among the VOIP API was an interesting AudioRoutingManager class.

The use of this API is to route the audio to VOIP communications endpoints other than the phone's speaker.

However, the class implements a AudioEndPointChanged event that lets you know the current audio endpoint device or if there was a change from the previous state, the values are exposed by an enumerator AudioRoutingEndpoint with the following members:

Member	Description
Default	The default audio endpoint, that is, the speakerphone.
Earpiece	An earpiece.
Speakerphone	The speakerphone.
Bluetooth	A Bluetooth device.
WiredHeadset	A wired headset.
WiredHeadsetSpeakerOnly	A wired headset for output only; the input is received from the default microphone.
BluetoothWithNoiseAndEchoCancellation	A Bluetooth device with noise and echo cancellation.

Voila! Registering to the event we’ll be "notified" when the status changes accordingly and know if the jack is inserted or not.

With this method we can detect many more information, as seen in the previous table, but we will manage only the one we need in each case.

Let's see then some code from the example that is linked at the end of the post.

In order to make anything work we have to add a new capabilities in the WMAppManifest, and specifically the ID_CAP_VOIP one.

First of all we register to the event with our handler:

 1: AudioRoutingManager.GetDefault().AudioEndpointChanged += MainPage_AudioEndpointChanged;

Then how to handle each case in out method:

 1: public void MainPage_AudioEndpointChanged(AudioRoutingManager sender, object args)

 2: {

 3:     var AudioEndPoint = sender.GetAudioEndpoint();

 4:     switch (AudioEndPoint)

 5:     {

 6:         case AudioRoutingEndpoint.Default:

 7:             {

 8:                 txtActual = "Default";

 9:                 break;

 10:             }

 11:         case AudioRoutingEndpoint.Earpiece:

 12:             {

 13:                 txtActual = "Earpiece";

 14:                 break;

 15:             }

 16:         case AudioRoutingEndpoint.Speakerphone:

 17:             {

 18:                 txtActual = "Speakerphone";

 19:                 break;

 20:             }

 21:         case AudioRoutingEndpoint.Bluetooth:

 22:             {

 23:                 txtActual = "Bluetooth";

 24:                 break;

 25:             }

 26:         case AudioRoutingEndpoint.WiredHeadset:

 27:             {

 28:                 txtActual = "WiredHeadset";

 29:                 break;

 30:             }

 31:         case AudioRoutingEndpoint.WiredHeadsetSpeakerOnly:

 32:             {

 33:                 txtActual = "WiredHeadsetSpeakerOnly";

 34:                 break;

 35:             }

 36:         case AudioRoutingEndpoint.BluetoothWithNoiseAndEchoCancellation:

 37:             {

 38:                 txtActual = "BluetoothWithNoiseAndEchoCancellation";

 39:                 break;

 40:             }

 41:         default:

 42:             throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException();

 43:     }

 44: }

In this code I managed all the possible case in order to verify each combination of wired or wireless connection.

To test it after launching the App, insert an earphone in the device and you’ll see a corresponding message on screen.

ATTENTION: I have tested GDR1 and GDR2 device, the app work on all device, but on GDR1 simply it doesn’t work and don’t show the changing values displayed.

I have no idea why it doesn't work, since VOIP APIs are implemented and working since the release of WP8.

Obviously the above applies only to device WP8.

You can find the source code of the sample app at this link .

Small personal satisfactions …..

Thu, 11 Jul 2013 16:07:08 GMT

In recent months I have to say that my commitment within the Italian Community given me some big satisfactions, in fact I had a chance to participate as a speaker or attendee to events that have expressed very high levels for content, and overall organization.

I refer to the ComunityDays of Milan and Catania, DotNetCampus, Codemotion or recent Better Embedded.

Not counting the numerous individual community events where I usually have relations DotNetToscana , DotNetLombardia, DomusDotNet, DotNetCampania, DotNetLiguria which month after month continue to organize events, deliver content, sessions, blog post.

Other than that I have had the pleasure to receive last March the recognition by Nokia of Nokia Developer Champion and more recently also to Nokia developer Champion of June 2013; What can I ask for?

Intel Perceptual Computing SDK 2013 get GOLD release 2

Wed, 03 Jul 2013 16:51:47 GMT

In these days our loved Perceptual SDK receive an update in the SDK incarnation, there's a lot of improvement and new implementation.

The release is marked with the version number 8779, just from the change log we can note the news.

First of all the Java app dev support and Projection in framework porting libraries support was added,

Many of the samples (either C++ and C#) was rewritten or heavily modified.

For example the Gesture_Viewer_Simple (in C#) was rewritten to be GUI based, now it use a WinForm to choose options, enable recognition and show graphical output of the gesture recognized; it lost the console interface approach in favor of an event/task based one.

Now this sample can be really used as base to start real application on the platform.

Same destiny for the Voice_recognition and Voice_Synthesis sample, completely rewritten as a GUI app and UNICODE support for the text.

Good sample for face detection and landmark tracking in C# is Face_analysis also in a simple GUI interface.

A new tutorial was written in order to support the Perc SDK on Havok Vision SDK (C++ game development platform).

I find also that the reactivity in general was improved, I'm particularly involved in gesture recognition and I note good improvement in this part.

On the voice_recognition sample is possible to change the source of audio sampling, between the PC standard, the array of the camera and Depth sens; I noted a big difference using each source. Using the mic of my ultrabook I can't recognize anything, with the Depth sense I have a a recog of about 50% and finally with the microphone array a good 80-90% of words were recognized correctly.

I've recompiled my test app with the new SDK and I generally see good enhancement in speed and reliability.

Good work guys!

You can download the new SDK from this link.

New appointments for Embedded Devs in Italy

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:16:31 GMT

We are seeing the arrival of the new wave of embedded product from Microsoft, and I think we will see many event about that around the world.

For now I want to remember two event where we can see some of these new tech here in Italy:

DotNetCampus on April 13th at Università Roma Tre

Better Embedded on July 8th and 9th in Florence

In these two conference I’ll be host some session about Windows Embedded Handeld and enterprise application.

Porting an Enterprise app from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone (Part 1 of ??)

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 23:36:35 GMT

That’s coming! The (real) successor of Windows Mobile (Windows Embedded Handheld 6.5.x) is coming in the next month (week?), as we already know.

We also understand that the next generation of handheld devices will be based on Windows Phone 8 OS (the correct name is Windows Embedded 8 Handheld or WE8H), so I decided to start the porting, or is better to say rewriting, of one of my Enterprise App I’ve developed in the last year, to the new OS.

This is the first of an unspecified number of posts, where I try to show every aspect of the app porting/rewriting

The App

The app was developed for some of my customers operating in the fashion and apparel market for managing the transfer items between shop and shop, warehouse and shops and vice-versa.

It also implement the inventory procedure for the warehouse or the shop. The items are identified obviously by its barcode who specify an item with its color (or variant) and size. We also handle a cost price and some other info that we’ll see better in the one of the next posts.

The Data

Usually the barcode reside in a local DB installed on the device and synced every night with the central server. When this app was written the installation of affordable Wi-Fi network in the warehouses is not a common practice, for that reason the majority of the installation use the local DB on the device.

In most case the number of barcode is very huge, I have some installation of this procedure working with 4 Millions record in the DB, yes 4.000.000 row in a SQLCE sdf file that need to be synced every night (multiplied by the number of device installed).

In that case I try to convince the customer to install a back office server, some Wi-Fi access point and use a WCF service from the server to retrieve the barcode and other data from the handheld in a Wi-Fi connected scenario connected . I often fail!

Considering it on WP8 it’s not very difficult, we can continue to use SQLCE but we can’t use the usual SQL methodology (connection, command, execute query etc.) but only via LINQ to SQL there’s no T-SQL. I can also consider to use a SQLite DB file, that is more often used in WP8 and Win8 apps.

But now every (most of) warehouse have an efficient Wi-Fi coverage that permit more easily to use the connected scenario. However it’s important to handle the disconnected situation where the app will be used out of coverage or in shops where there’s no connection or no access to the server.

The device

I usually installed Symbol devices, and in particular the MC70/75 and MC300/3100 models. These devices mount ARM processors at 600 MHz and have a maximum of 256 MB Ram /1GB Flash (in the most recent model) nothing to compare to the lower specs of a WP8 device Snapdragon processor not less of 1 GHz dual core, 512 MB Ram /4GB Storage.

At this time there’s no WE8H device announced officially, but I suppose that the hardware specs will not differ from current WP8 devices specs. The main difference will be about the rugged case, the barcode reader, the type of radio they’ll mount (Wi-Fi, GSM/3G/LTE, Bluetooth), other type of reader/writer interface like NFC or RFID.

In the next post we see the structure of the app an we start to see how we can port some features considering the differences between the OS and taking in in mind the new consideration we need to do about User experience and User interface that we learn from the Modern UI App guidelines .

Printing with Windows Phone

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 17:59:00 GMT

Last week I hosted a session at an event named WPReborn, organized by the Community DotNetLombardia at the Microsoft headquarters in Milan.

As the name of the event say, all the sessions try to clarify all the news coming with WP8 bat also many aspect that usually you don’t find around.

My speech was about the Enterprise Application on WP8.

I specifically develop a demo of an app for the paying park management with relative ticket emission.

Every day we see similar app around the city, but (till now) no one is based on Windows Phone.

I’ll try to share my experience about the connection and use of a little thermal ticket printer to my device and use it to print.

Let’s start from the printer: I’ve used a Custom MY Printer Bluetooth.

They recently announced the support for Windows Phone 8 and in the next week they will publish a little SDK to interface and use the printer.

At the time of preparing my presentation I don’t have the SDK, so I’ve used a more “oldstyle” approach to the programmation.

Connection and communication

The connection with the printer use the Bluetooth channel that (obviously) need to be active on the phone and a relation established between the devices.

Now from the App we can look for the available (and connected) Bluetooth device with the following code:

 1:  PeerFinder.AlternateIdentities["Bluetooth:PAIRED"] = "";

 2:             try

 3:             {

 4:                 IReadOnlyList<PeerInformation> devices =

 5:          await PeerFinder.FindAllPeersAsync();

The obtained list can be searched for the device name (in my case I look for the string “MY Printer” in the device name list.

Now we can effectively open the communication channel with the device:

 1:    this.btsocket = new StreamSocket();

 2:    try

 3:    {

 4:        await this.btsocket.ConnectAsync

 5: (hname, "{00001101-0000-1000-8000-00805F9B34FB}");

 6:    }

 7: ...

 8:    if (this.btsocket != null)

 9:    {

 10:        this.txData = new DataWriter

 11:           (this.btsocket.OutputStream);

 12:        this.rxData = new DataReader

 13:           (this.btsocket.InputStream)

 14:    }

And then create a DataWriter and a DataReader that we will use for write or read on the printer.

Let’s Print

And now come the “enjoyable” part, now we start to send strings to the printer that will be impress on the little thermal paper strip.

We need to consider that the printer work in ESC/POS emulation, in order to change the size or typology of a char, of its height, width or print it in negative we need to send some control character before the string to print.

For example, to print in negative is necessary to send the Hex sequence “1D” “42” “01” followed by the string to print, then we will send the sequence “1D” “42” “00” that will disable this print mode:

 1: txData.WriteBytes(Cmd_ALTCMD);

 2: txData.WriteBytes(Cmd_Inverse);

 3: txData.WriteBytes(Cmd_ON);

 4: txData.WriteString("| Enterprise APP on WP8 |");

 5: txData.WriteBytes(Cmd_CommandLF);

 6: txData.WriteBytes(Cmd_ALTCMD);

 7: txData.WriteBytes(Cmd_Inverse);

 8: txData.WriteBytes(Cmd_OFF);

9:

 10: await (IAsyncOperation<uint>)

 11:    txData.StoreAsync();

where the various “Cmd…” are defined in the following:

 1: byte[] Cmd_CommandLF = new byte[] { 10 };

 2: byte[] Cmd_ESC = new byte[] { 27 };

 3: byte[] Cmd_ALTCMD = new byte[] { 29 };

 4: byte[] Cmd_Enlarged = new byte[] { 69 };

 5: byte[] Cmd_ON = new byte[] { 1 };

 6: byte[] Cmd_OFF = new byte[] { 0 };

 7: byte[] Cmd_Inverse = new byte[] { 66 };

 8: byte[] Cmd_ModoStampa = new byte[] { 33 };

 9: byte[] Cmd_D_LargALT = new byte[] { 48 };

 10: byte[] Cmd_D_LargALT_font2 = new byte[] { 49 };

 11: byte[] Cmd_D_Larg = new byte[] { 32 };

 12: byte[] Cmd_D_Alte = new byte[] { 16 };

Calling “StoreAsync()” get the stream of data previously placed on the stream and sent it (asynchronously) to the printer.

This programming approach get us back many year, when programming a report mean come crazy between control code and line feed; an unfair daily war.

A similar approach, but more complicated apply for the graphics printing, but in this case we need to divide the image in “stripe” of bit that represent the image (a bit representation of it) that will be sent to the printer in packet with a specific syntax.

In these days I receive info from the producer of the printer about the availability of the complete SDK where we can print a bitmap starting from the image file without any conversion to do.

UPDATE: the producer (CUSTOM) had released a demo application on the store. The app permit to test textual and graphic layout on the printer. You can download it free at the following link.

Windows Embedded 8 Handeld: The return of Windows Mobile!

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 16:11:15 GMT

Ok, I already know that the Microsoft Marketing guys will hate me for my title, but I think this was the only title that could sum up my thoughts.

In fact, if we’re going back until the beginning of 2010 we find the announcement of the new platform and ecosystem: Windows Phone 7 or, as it was called at first Windows Phone 7 series.

That announcement marked the end of Windows Mobile platform on which much of the enterprise market for retail, logistics, hospitality etc was based.

Many (like me) was apparently deprived of a future in their main work platform .

In the next months Microsoft write about that the platform would still be supported and would evolve and upgrade.

However in these 2 years (2011 and 2012) the only changes were that Windows Mobile pass to the Embedded Division and the name was changed to Windows Embedded Handeld.

However, market expectations were disregarded with respect to announcements or news releases, except for the revision 6.5.3 adopted by major market players (Motorola, Intermec, Honeywell etc) on their latest models of terminal sold on the market.

At the end of last year the good news then began to arrive when, after the official launch of Windows 8, some infos were released about Windows Embedded product roadmap related to the new Windows 8 era; between these product appear Windows Embedded Handeld 8!

Yes! Even (our) operating system is part of the new family and receives a major update!

Actually is a real change, in fact Windows Embeded Handeld 8 (from now on WE8H) will be based on Windows Phone 8 and development will therefore be based on the Microsoft phone SDK already widely known and documented anywhere on the net.

And finally yesterday (14 January 2013) official launch National Retail Federation (NRF) Annual Convention & EXPO , where he was also presented the first showcase in collaboration with Motorola and HomeDepot.

In the list of Dev productor involved appear (thankfully) all the usual names like Bluebird, Honeywell, Intermec, Motorola, Ingenico Solutions (former Symbol) that meanwhile has also absorbed Psion,

Later in the year Microsoft will release a specific SDK for WE8H to support any specific APIs required by industrial devices such as barcode reading, reading/writing of RFID and NFC, and smartcard access Magnetic badges etc.

Now, let’s get your mouse and keyboard in hand and go back to develop our beloved enterprise application finally abandoning WinForm but not quite our dear Compact framework!!!

About this I’ll talk at the event WPReborn 2013 that will be held at Microsoft Italy in Milan on Jan 28, with the session: “WP8 into the field: a real-life case of adoption in the enterprise world”.

I will try to show some "special effect" that I have in mind!

Windows Embedded: What's the situation?

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 21:58:29 GMT

Windows 8 day is approaching, all the echosystem around it may (we hope) revitalive the market, but in these days less or nothing is in the news about the "other" Microsoft world: EMBEDDED.

Let me try to point the actual situation:

Windows Embedded Standard is in release previewtoday, as reported by Twitter channel of Windows Embedded.As the previous versions (till CTP3) we can try it downloading from Connect.

From the CTP3 distribution, the binaries are aligned with the RTM of Windows 8, the release preview add some fix, the online key activation and remove the USB Filter.

It's obviously possible to test the platform creating system images, I think to write a specific post about it.

The RTM will be in first quarter 2013.

Windows Embedded Compact: the last actual version available is ver 7, about vNext we only know that will arrive in the first quarter of 2013 (as Standard version), there will be the Visual Studio 2012 support, ARM, x86 e x64 platform will be supported (no words about others).

Obviously there's no info about the kernel whether it will continue to be based on the actual one (*), or will be based on the new kernel of Windows 8 as the new Windows Phone 8.

For the rule of backward compatibility that distinct all the Embedded version I think that will be an evolution evolution of the "old" core, but only time will tell.

For people like me who work in this industry, this news is a good sign, at least that there will be something new, as we began seriously to despair on the continuity and vitality of the platform in this regard I suggest a post about just the "vitality" of the platform quoting a speech of General Manager of Windows Embedded, Kevin Dallas. You can find it here.

(*) other system based on Embedded Compact are for example Windows Phone 7, Windows Embedded Handeld (CE 5) or Windows Embedded for Auto.