Exploring VMR Features on Windows Embedded Compact 7

As you may know that Windows Embedded Compact 7 has new component for DirectShow video rendering(Video Mixing Render) which is more advanced than the old video render used in Windows Embedded CE 6.0.This blog explore the features of VMR on WEC7. See the below link for more details...
http://www.e-consystems.com/blog/windowsce/?p=759 

Cloning the Rnaapp application using Sysgen_Capture tool

I used to pin point the How to remove Pop-up windows in Kiosk mode blog in MSDN forums to hide the pop-up Windows for Kiosk system. I have dealt with some public source code in the blog to hide the Pop-up Windows. You may know that it is not advisable to change the public source code directly and you are recommended to clone the public components to your platform BSP before modify the source code. Cloning the component is straight forward for some components by using platform builder IDE and for some components we have to manually clone the component using sysgen_capture tool in command prompt. Unfortunately we have to manually clone the components which I have mentioned in the blog using sysgen_capture tool.see the below given blog for more details...
http://www.e-consystems.com/blog/windowsce/?p=636

Windows Embedded Compact 7: Silverlight Shell with ActiveSync

I have troubleshooted the Silverlight shell not launching with Active Sync on Windows Embedded Compact 7. Please see the below given blog for more details...
http://www.e-consystems.com/blog/windowsce/?p=617 

Implementing Digital Zoom Using Directshow Render on Windows CE 6.0

There are some cases wherein digital zoom is required to implement in your Directshow camera application. For example, some camera modules support a few levels of optical zoom and user have a need of more zoom level apart from the supported camera optical zoom or some camera won’t support optical zoom at all. If this is your case, then this blog post can give you some pointers to implement the digital zoom in your Directshow camera application on window CE 6.0.
http://www.e-consystems.com/blog/windowsce/?p=544 

Loading USB Composite Functional Device on Windows CE USB Composite Function Driver

As everybody knows Windows CE 6.0 supports USB functional composite driver to load multiple client driver simultaneously. Normally we used to load the functional device classes having single interface descriptor. Some of the functional client driver like USB Video class (UVC) has multiple interface descriptors. While connecting the UVC device to PC, it will be detected as a composite device. Now there is a situation that a device having a mass storage functional driver, custom HID functional driver and a UVC functional driver (Composite device) will be loaded simultaneously on a composite functional driver. But we can’t load the UVC (composite device) on Windows CE composite functional driver directly without doing some tweak. This blog show a way to do this easily.
http://www.e-consystems.com/blog/windowsce/?p=465

Performance Tuning on DirectShow Camera Application

Windows CE 6.0 supports DirectShow® components to develop a rich camera application. A minimum requirement of the camera application is to show preview, capturing the still images which is stored as a compressed file (JPG) format, capturing/multiplexing the video with or without audio i.e. stored as a compressed file (WMV) format. See the below given blog link on how to achieve the performance...
http://www.e-consystems.com/blog/windowsce/?p=415

WinCE Shortcut to Control Panel Applet

A recently invoked query on the MSDN news group for Windows CE has induced me to script this post. Most of our WinCE guys might be aware of creating a shortcut for a file. Now a simple question – Is it possible to create a short-cut to each and every individual control panel application? The answer is YES, it’s possible and quite enthusiastic too.See the below given link for more details...
http://www.e-consystems.com/blog/windowsce/?p=378

Customizing Power Manager for SetSystemPowerState()

Changing the system state can be as simple as a cup of tea! by calling SetSystemPowerstate() API. But not all power states can be allowed to set through this API in the default cases. For example setting to “SystemIdle” using this API will be failed.

There are some use cases, we may need to set “systemIdle” through our application/driver or we may need to deny the application/driver to set some power states.  Sometimes, we would like to have our own power state created and it may be allowed to set from the application/driver.  To do this, we have to customize the Windows CE power manager.

http://www.e-consystems.com/blog/windowsce/?p=229 

Creating an effective image viewer in Windows CE

There are some cases where we may need to develop a DLL or application to show the images on the devices. For example, an Image viewer will be needed to show the picture after taking a snap shot from the camera using a direct show camera application. Windows CE supports Imaging APIs to handle the various file types like JPG, BMP, TIFF and GIF etc…
http://www.e-consystems.com/blog/windowsce/?p=221 

Handling Real Time Tasks in Windows CE

There are certain use cases – we may have to handle the non-standard custom interface to communicate between the processor and the hardware. An example is controlling the brightness of an LCD. The brightness controller is interfaced with the processor in a single GPIO pin. Communication will happen by just toggling the GPIO at a constant rate through software driver.

Since Windows CE is a multi-threading OS, task switching will happen between multiple threads. This task switching may prevent your driver to maintain the constant rate of GPIO toggling. This leads to malfunction. See more details on the following link...

http://www.e-consystems.com/blog/windowsce/?p=218 

Sharing I2C bus between OAL RTC part and Driver part on Windows CE

Real Time Clock or RTC is an essential component in all embedded systems. Designers interface these RTC chips through a common I2C bus shared by a lot of peripherals and sensors. Therefore a common I2C bus driver is needed to the developers.Since an I2C interface is a shared bus, synchronization is needed between the devices to access the I2C bus. Windows CE supports synchronization objects like critical sections, semaphore and mutex etc.., to share the device or bus in driver level without conflict. But RTC related functionalities are implemented in the OAL.exe. Therefore it is not possible to use synchronization objects in the OAL part. This blog depicts – how to share I2C bus between OAL and driver without conflict.
http://www.e-consystems.com/blog/windowsce/?p=121

Reload the Power Manager activity timeout upon every booting in Hive based Registry

Power management is an important aspect of the modern embedded devices. Flexibility in the OS Power Manager is the key driver to meet the requirements of myriad of devices. Windows CE offers this flexibility, though developer has to do a quick tweak to use it effectively. This blog describes the power manager in Windows CE, problem faced and how to overcome it.
http://www.e-consystems.com/blog/windowsce/?p=112

How to remove Pop-up windows in Kiosk mode

Windows CE is a customizable OS and custom application has been executed on the top of the OS. Majority of the customers won’t prefer to use the windows CE standard utilities embed on the control panel. Instead they develop their own applications using the standard APIs. During these cases, customer won’t like the standard utility windows popping up on the top of their application. See the below given link for more details...

 http://www.e-consystems.com/blog/windowsce/?p=81

Workaround for Suspend using core idle or ring Oscillator Mode in PXA320

e-con systems encourages his engineers to publish blogs on Windows CE in his blog website. From this blog onwards I am publishing my blogs on e-con systems Windows CE blog website and provide the links here.

Power Management is one of the crucial aspects of the handheld design. In various handhelds, the power management states and transition to these states without losing the operating context is the key to effective implementation of Power Management. The design decision of device power states, individual module power states in each of the power states, trigger sources configuration for each state etc are very important steps in the design stage. The design stage also involves the incorporation of the device power stages in to Windows CE Power Management framework.
This blog describes one interesting problem encountered in PXA320 CPU power modes in a Windows CE based design.Link the URL for more details about this blog.
http://www.e-consystems.com/blog/windowsce/?p=66