Application Development on Windows Embedded Compact 2013

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Application Development on Windows Embedded
Compact 2013

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Windows Embedded Compact 2013 is the latest
product release in the Microsoft Embedded Compact
family. It was launched in 2013 and will be
supported until 2023, when the end of its life
cycle is scheduled.
CHAIRMAN
WEC2013 introduces many new features when
compared to Windows Embedded Compact 7.0 and
Windows Embedded CE 6.0. The main change in this
version is the possibility of using VS2012,
VS2013, and VS2015 (currently supports only the
native code) as the development environment,
which in my opinion is one of the greatest
updates since this allows the developers to use a
more modern and updated IDE. Some of the new
features added to the WEC2013 are listed below
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• NET Compact Framework 3.9 supporting multicore
  processors
• Integrated with Visual Studio 2012/2013/2015
• Performance improvement in the File System
• New compiler supporting C 11 (this is the main
  reason for the versions 6 7 being limited to
  VS2008)
• More information on MSDN

CHAIRMAN
A major advantage of using the new Windows
Embedded Compact 2013 is having the .NET Compact
3.9 and this is what we will be testing in this
blog post. The cited blog post shows some of the
improvements made from the previous versions,
including multicore support!
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What will you need to reproduce this test? You
will need Visual Studio 2013 installed on your
computer (Microsoft offers it at
https//www.visualstudio.com/en-us/dn469161) and
you will also need Application Builder, an add-on
that is provided for free by Microsoft at this
link. Once Application Builder is installed,
Visual Studio will offer a programming option for
smart devices. The next step is to install the
Embedded board SDK, either created by you when
you built your own OS or provided by the hardware
manufacturer. In my case, I will use a Colibri
iMX6DL 512MB (NXP/Freescale iMX6DL - ARM
CortexTM-A9 and Windows Embedded Compact 2013
ported by Toradex ).
CHAIRMAN
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This Toradex CoM comes with WEC2013 licenses and
the OS (production grade) image included in the
hardware price (check the webshop). The OS images
for Toradex modules are available for download on
the developer website. Toradex also offers the
WEC2013 SDK for its OS images, files, and
installation instructions which are available at
this link. Once everything is installed, the
Windows Embedded Compact option will appear under
the new project menu (see Image 1).
CHAIRMAN
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CHAIRMAN
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I started a new project using the traditional
interface of Visual Studio to create a new
application using Visual C. On the New Project
menu go toVisual C gt Windows Embedded Compact
gt Toradex 800gt Device Application When you select
this option, your project will appear on the
screen with the traditional Visual Studio 2013
interface a Toolbox to drag objects on the
screen, object properties menu, and other Visual
Studio tools (refer Image 2).
CHAIRMAN
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CHAIRMAN
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Here, I have dragged and dropped several Panel
Components to my Form1 and changed their
Backcolor property to different colors (see Image
2 Red arrow). I have also created the Click
Method for each of these Panels, into the code I
set the Form background property to the same as
the Panel Background property, this will happen
for the Panel_Click method, see the code below in
Image 3.
CHAIRMAN
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CHAIRMAN
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You can initialize the debugging process by
simply clicking on the Windows Embedded Compact
debugger (yes, the famous play button!) At this
point, some considerable differences between
WinCE7 and 2013 may appear. The notable
difference is that debugging cannot be done using
the USB interface, but only through a network
connection. In the video below, you can check
out the test running on a display and being
debugged on Visual Studio 2013 at my development
host. Note that in the video I also show another
nice feature I change from the Colibri iMX6DL to
a Colibri VF61.
CHAIRMAN
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Both modules are part of the Colibri
pin-compatible module family, but while the first
module has a dual-core ARM-A9, the other module
has the ARM-A5. Once WEC2013 is started on the
new module, just hit play again and the
application works again on the new module and new
processor even though they feature different
cores.
CHAIRMAN
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CHAIRMAN
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Toradex solutions are fully scalable as Toradex
already takes care of the differences for you and
therefore you can focus your efforts on your
product/application development. This will give
you a huge advantage with time-to-market, cost
optimization, and risk management when developing
a new solution for the market.
CHAIRMAN
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Thank you!