Thursday, August 13, 2015

Windows 10 IoT Core – Sample Camera applications



Public release of Windows 10 IoT Core is announced for Raspberry Pi 2 and Minnow board Max recently. It supported UVC stack and media foundation class in the release. As I am working on a company (e-con systems) which is expert in design and manufacture the industrial camera modules, I would like to evaluate Windows 10 IoT Core on Raspberry Pi 2 with few of our USB cameras modules.

As you know Microsoft introduced the Universal Windows Platform(UWP) from Windows 10, Which means application developed using UWP can run on Windows 10 PC, mobile and IOT core devices. So I searched for camera sample applications for windows 10 and found the following list of sample UWP applications for camera from the Github.


I am able to build and deploy successfully all these application on Raspberry Pi 2. Now I realised the advantage of UWP applications and the one core windows 10. The Earlier Windows Embedded Compact OS are unique versions which are not common to other versions of Windows. You can find the similarity of the OS features but not exactly the same and it should be subset of the PC windows OS. You have to port the PC application to Windows Embedded Compact OS and it is not a simple build like the UWP applications.


Unfortunately due to the performance bottleneck of Raspberry Pi 2 USB 2.0 port and unavailability of DirectX drivers, preview frame rate is dropped down and just got 5 to 10 FPS even in lower resolutions such as 640x480. But actually the USB camera module is capable of sending 30 fps in this resolution. Hope we can get a better performance on Minnow board Max but I don’t have it to test it.

Monday, June 15, 2015

IoT With Azure - Enterprise Cloud Road Show 2015

I got an opportunity to present a session on Internet of Things (IoT) with Azure in the Enterprise Cloud Road Show 2015 event conducted by Microsoft. All the sessions taken by MVPs. Thanks Biplab Paul - Community Manager and Gandhrav Rawat for this opportunity. I have shared a snapshot of this Event.

IoT with Azure on Enterprise Cloud Road Show 2015
I have shown a demo on  pushing data to Azure Event hubs from Windows 10 IoT Core running on Raspberry Pi 2. you can refer the following blog post for source code.
Windows 10 IoT Core on Raspberry Pi 2 – Adafruit Sensor data to Event Hubs
Windows 10 IoT Core RP-2 Demo Setup

See the below link for presentation slides.
http://www.slideshare.net/VinothRajagopalan/io-t-with-azure

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Windows 10 IoT Core on Raspberry Pi 2 – Adafruit Sensor data to Event Hubs

I have moved this article to hackster.io for easy access and also the prompt site for this kind of article. Here is the link, Please go ahead...

Monday, April 27, 2015

Global Azure Bootcamp 2015 - Microsoft IoT Solutions with Azure



Global Azure Bootcamp is a one day world-wide event on 25th April, driven by Microsoft Azure experts and community enthusiasts, to help thousands of people get up to speed on developing Cloud Computing Applications for Azure. This event is organised by Karthikeyan Anbarasan (MVP) through Chennai Microsoft User Group (CMUG). I got an opportunity to take a session on “Microsoft IoT Solutions with Azure” with a live demo on accessing Azure Event hubs and Stream Analytics using Intel Galileo with sensors – Windows IoT. 
You can refer the previous blog  Windows IoT on Galileo – Using Event Hubs and Stream Analytics for source code.


Thanks CMUG!!!

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Windows IoT on Galileo – Using Event Hubs and Stream Analytics



This blogs explains you on how to access Azure Event hubs from Galileo integrated with Adafruit 10-DOF IMU sensor board and using Azure stream Analytics to pipeline the sensor data stream to Azure storage services. 

Prerequisites

WEC2013 - e-consystems Bluetooth LE stack

e-con systems has developed its own Bluetooth LE stack for Windows Embedded compact 2013. Hope this will take Windows Embedded compact 2013 platform to a newer market place like healthcare, fitness, security and home entertainment industries. Please see the below link to know more.
http://www.e-consystems.com/bluetooth-low-energy.asp
Also see the below demo video on e-con systems Ankaa development kit ( iMX6 SOM based dev kit) running on WEC2013 with TI Bluetooth LE Sensor Tag.




Monday, March 16, 2015

Windows IoT on Galileo – Using Event Hubs (Connectthedot.io)



An interesting open source project going on Microsoft Open technologies named connectthedot.io.  


Fig) Connectthedot.io
This is intended to help developers to connect small devices to Microsoft Azure and implementing data analytics with Azure services such as Event hubs, Stream Analytics and Machine Learning.

One interesting thing I found from the project is, we can access Azure Event hubs from Galileo Windows IoT using simple C++. Here is the link for the sample application created using “Galileo Wiring App”.

This application get the data from sensors and push it as events to Azure Event hub. This application creates JSON packets and send it through AMQP protocol to Azure Event hub. Challenging part (sending data from Galileo) is released by Microsoft Open Technologies. Receiving part should be a cake walk. Sample for receiving data from Windows 8.1 PC or WP8.1 is already given in MSDN using Azure .Net SDK. 

I used azurestorage services for earlier demo/blogs with Galileo. Now I am going to try this application with my sensor module connected with Galileo. Hope you can also enjoy this.


Friday, March 13, 2015

Windows IoT on Galileo – Sensors to Server Part-2


As a final touch and the continuation of earlier Windows IoT for Galileo – Sensors to Server, This blog explain you on how to retrieve sensor data from Azure storage table services that already have sensor data pushed from Galileo Windows IoT.

      Prerequisites


Monday, February 16, 2015

Windows IoT on Galileo – Sensors to Server




This blog explain you on how to push data to Azure storage table services from Adafruit 10-DOF IMU sensor module connected to Galileo Gen1 or Gen2.  

Prerequisites

Thursday, February 12, 2015

Windows IoT on Galileo – Accessing Azure storage services



Now Galileo is capable of accessing azure storage services after several tries and tweaks. As you know Windows developer Program for IoT released the Casablanca C++ REST SDK for accessing cloud services from Galileo but this is not sufficient to access azure services and we need to port or develop another layer on top of it to access specific Azure services. I searched and fortunately found a C++ library that can specifically made to access Azure storage services and again that is using the Casablanca C++ REST SDK. Wow!!!. But this happiness was not withstood for long time after building it and running it simply on Galileo. Let’s get hands dirty!!!

Prerequisites

  • Supported for both Intel Galileo Gen1 and Gen2.
  • Latest OS update released on 21-Nov-2014 (common .wim for Gen1 and Gen2) for    lightning (improved performance on I2C, SPI, and UART etc..) 
  • Visual studio 2013 with Windows IoT SDK (Visit: windowsondevices.com for more details) and Microsoft IoT C++ SDK and its dependent NuGet Package is required.
  • NuGet package for C++ REST SDK (Casablanca) Version ≥ 2.0.1 (tested with version    2.0.1 and 2.2.0)
  • Source code for C++ REST SDK. Go through the instructions given in the below link.