Pete Brown's Blog (POKE 53280,0)
Pete Brown writes on a variety of topics from XAML with the Windows Runtime (WinRT), .NET programming using C#, WPF, Microcontroller programming with .NET Microframework, .NET Gadgeteer, Windows on Devices, and even plain old C, to raising two children in the suburbs of Maryland, woodworking, CNC and generally "making physical stuff". Oh, and Pete loves retro technology, especially Commodore (C64 and C128). If the content interests you, please subscribe using the subscription link to the right of every page.
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I stopped into Best Buy yesterday and picked up something I had
been considering toying with: a LEAP Motion. This is
an interesting little $79 device which turns the airspace at your
computer into a live space for interaction. It recognizes all ten
fingers on your hands, differentiates between left and right hand,
open and closed, and can read the pitch, roll, and yaw of your
hand, pinc...
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Like many of you, I spend the majority of my day on a desktop PC.
My PC happens to have two 30" displays, neither of which is touch,
and a Logitech Touch Pad that has some basic gesture recognition.
It's a giant water-cooled, overclocked beast that I built in 2010
(and upgraded video since then) and which still beats many new PCs
sold today. This particular PC has been upgraded from Wind...
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If you're a Windows Phone (or iOS or Android) user and want a
smart watch which you can program using .NET, then get into the AGENT watch kickstarter before it ends in just
4 days.
You may know Secret Labs from their most popular NETMF product,
the Netduino. I've always been a huge fan of their stuff.
Community
Secret labs has always made community a core part of their
pr...
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Look what just arrived at the door!
The author copies are usually in the first set to be sent out.
For folks who have pre-ordered paper copies, you should see those
really soon. The ebooks typically show up shortly afterwards.
Yes, this is Windows 8 XAML in Action. We renamed the
book to better cover its ongoing focus.
How to get your own copy
If you're at TechEd NA 2013 th...
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A large number of apps in the Windows Store follow the "bunch of
boxes in a GridView" approach to the hub screen.
This can work in some cases, but I encourage developers and
designers to move beyond that look, and consider either evolutions
of it, or completely different approaches.
Boxes 1.0
For many, the basic box layout is a very workable layout. Here's
one of my essential app...
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.NET 4.5 quietly introduced several attributes which are useful
for debugging and error reporting: CallerMemberName, CallerFilePath
and CallerLineNumber, all collectively referred to as "Caller Information". One of those,
CallerMemberName, is also very useful for MVVM apps and other apps
using INotifyPropertyChanged for change notifications.
Getting the calling function name
The Cal...
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A common cause of Windows Store app certification failures is a
missing or insufficient privacy policy. Many don't realize that a
network-enabled app must have a policy, or if they do, don't
realize exactly what needs to go into it. In this post, I'll talk
about some of my observations regarding what makes for a good
privacy policy for a Windows Store app.
IMPORTANT: This is neither...
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I'm working on a Windows 8 synthesizer app using XAudio2 and a
C++ + DirectX/XAML Windows Store app for Windows 8. As part of
this, I thought it would be fun to add a simple bit
crusher effect with included sample rate reducer. The point of
this effect is to make samples sound like they came from older
machines with lower bitrates and sample depth. To do that, I had to
do two things to ...
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I recently did some work on my MikroElektronika ARM development
board. This was the first time I fired up the board on my
Windows 8 system. Everything in the IDE worked fine until I tried
to do some deploying and debugging on the board itself. It was then
that I realized the board's driver wasn't correctly installed. I
looked in the device manager and, sure enough, the board had the
lit...
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I recently upgraded my main desktop PC to Windows 8. When I did
that, the Microsoft LifeCam software stopped working. It was
recognized as incompatible with Windows 8. For most people, this is
not an issue, as it works perfectly fine with the built-in Windows
8 camera app.
For me, however, I need a small camera app sitting on my desktop
so I can see the hallway leading to my office. I...
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At Build, the Surfaces used by Jordan Rudess (and later provided
to Jordan and his tech Gianluca Trombetta, just like we did with
other Build attendees) were set up in advance with local accounts
rather than Microsoft accounts. This made it easy for me to have
everything ready for when Jordan took the stage.
One thing both Jordan and Gianluca needed to do to make the
Surfaces their ow...
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My WPF talk from Build 2012 is live at
Channel9. Slides are available via that link as well.
I cover a few of the more interesting features in WPF 4.5, as
well as techniques for using Portable Class Libraries (PCL) to
share code with Windows 8 app.
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My son is 6 1/2 and my daughter is 4. Today, my wife had some of
my children's homeschool friends over. One of them is a 10 year old
boy.
He saw Windows 8 on my 6yo son's laptop upstairs and said "You
have Windows 8?!?". He was very excited because he didn't have it
yet himself. He started telling my son all about Windows 8 and
what's coming. This is a 10 year old boy, mind you.
UP...
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Privacy is a huge concern to most customers. Part of the Windows
Store app certification process includes checking for the presence
of a privacy policy if your app declares any capabilities which
could affect privacy.
MSDN has a section (4.1.1) explaining what is expected
from the privacy policy. I won't quote it here, but some important
points jump out (emphasis mine):
Declaring...
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At several recent events (VSLive Redmond, thatConference, the
Heartland Developer Conference and more), I've had a neat little
.NET Micro Framework robot with me. The remote control for the
robot is a Windows 8 tablet running a simple Modern UI/Windows
Store app I wrote in C#/XAML. The example shows both how you can
use C# skills to build robots, and also how flexible the new
Windows St...
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I've posted a few videos lately on YouTube. Here they are,
newest to oldest. Take a look, and if you like them, drop a comment
on the video and/or "like" it. Thanks!
All videos are available on my channel on
YouTube.
My
tutorial on how I hand-solder tiny surface mount components. Watch
in 1080p.
A drone I
created with my JP8080 and Spectrasonics Omni...
Published
Sunday, August 26, 2012 |
Tagged:
.NET, Synthesizer, WindowsClient, Videos, Netduino, Micro+Framework, Electronics, Gadgeteer, Windows8 |
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The platform is new. The design aesthetic is new. Many
of us could use some architecture or design consultation when
building Windows 8 apps. My friend Andrew Duthie pointed me to a
Microsoft service called "Generation App". This is something we
offer to help you get started building apps, and to help you get
quality apps into the store early (
which may help you to earn more money wit...
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In this post, I show how to have bidirectional UDP
communication: The Win8 Metro style app will send messages to the
Gadgeteer device which responds with ACKs.
This is part 3 in a series of posts about using sockets to
communicate between Windows 8 Metro apps and a microcontroller. The
rest of the series may be found here:
Part 1: Simple UDP networking test from a Metro style XA...
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In this post, I show how to set up the UDP code on the Micro
Framework side so it can listen to messages coming from the Windows
8 app.
This is part 2 in a series of posts about using sockets to
communicate between Windows 8 Metro apps and a microcontroller. The
rest of the series may be found here:
Part 1: Simple UDP networking test from a Metro style XAML
app
Part 2: This ...
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One of my pet projects requires using UDP sockets from a Windows
8 Metro style app to talk to a microcontroller. UDP sockets are a
pretty efficient way of communicating across wired and wireless
connections.
In this first part, we'll focus on prototyping the Metro style
XAML/C# app. The NETMF piece will be in the next post.
Test Setup
The first step is to figure out how we'll tes...
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Last week, at Tech Ed US, I gave a WPF 4.5 overview to a
completely packed room. The materials and video links are
below.
Downloads and Links
Video and Downloadable Slides
Information on AutoHotKey, the tool I used for
snippets.
Demo Code (for WPF 4.5 RC) attached below.
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The next book is well underway! We released several chapters
from Windows 8 XAML in Action as part of this week's
MEAP (Manning Early Access Program) kickoff.
Through the MEAP, you get access to chapters right after my
development editor takes a look at them. You don't have to wait for
the full book to be finished and in print (which takes forever) to
be able to use it. Bonus: MEAP ch...