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your Windows® embedded community
Windows For Devices
your Windows® embedded community
The hobbyist contest later got renamed embeddedSPARK, and, due to its popularity, moved from being staged just once annually to twice a year. The embeddedSPARK 2010 event, concluded last year at ESC (Embedded Systems Conference) Silicon Valley, employed Windows CE, while a newly added embeddedSPARK 2010 Summer Challenge -- which concluded in September -- turned to the Windows 7-based Windows Embedded Standard 7.
We were earlier told the original embeddedSPARK event, which now focuses on the Windows CE-based Windows Embedded Compact 7 operating system, would be dubbed "Winter Challenge" moving forward. (This would have distinguished it from the summer event, but Microsoft doesn't appear to be using the winter moniker any longer.)
The first round of the event ended on Jan. 30, when contestants were to submit a one- to three-page outlining an embedded project "that approaches media in a new and innovative way." In February, 75 winners were chosen to advance to round two of the event, and received an embedded SPARK hardware/software kit (described later in this story) with which to create their projects.
Now, slightly behind schedule, three finalists have been revealed on the embeddedSPARK forum in a post by contest organizer "Steel" (a.k.a Gitte-Lena Andersen, pictured at right). Microsoft says each will receive a flight to the 2011 Windows Embedded DevDive, a new event at the company's main campus that's replacing the Mobile and Embedded Developer Conference (canceled in 2008).
As far as we're aware, Microsoft still hasn't quite nailed down dates for the DevDive, though a mid-June timeframe was being mooted earlier. The company did say that among the three finalists, the first-prize winner will receive $15,000 in cash. The second- and third-prize winners will receive cash prizes of $5,000 and $1,000, respectively, the company adds.
And now, to the winners. According to Steel, they are:
Flying disaster relief
According to Sebastian Salcedeo's formal submission, ARS8VER is a device intended to locate people who are in need of rescue following disasters such as earthquakes. It incorporates a quadricopter capable of flying for about 35 minutes on a change, an embedded PC, a solar panel, Wi-Fi, a camera, and a GPS receiver.
Salcedo writes that the ARS8VER -- designed to be controlled remotely from either a laptop or a Windows Phone 7 device -- can find victims two different ways. Images from its camera are processed via facial recognition software; meantime, auto captured via its microphone is filtered to remove the helicopter noise and analyze the range (from 300 to 3000Hz) occupied by the human voice, detecting cries for help.
It's said the ARS8VER also includes a GPS receiver, allowing mapping of what areas have been searched and indicating the exact location of any victims who have been found. When the device's batteries begin to die, it drifts to the ground, transmitting its location so that it can be collected later. (At that point, it can also start recharging itself using the solar panel, Salcedo says.)
A 21st-century blackboard
Created by Marco Bodoira, whose "Guitar Multi Effect" project won the embeddedSPARK 2010 contest last April, the Digital Blackboard is designed to help members of a household create shopping lists and collaborate on other tasks. It consists of a touchscreen PC with a custom interface written using Expression Blend, and featuring widgets that can be placed anywhere on the screen.
According to Bodoira, widgets include:
A mobile device can't provide exactly the same view as the blackboard, because of screen size limitations. Therefore, Bodoira notes, the panorama shown above allows users to access dedicated shopping list, birthdays, and "remember" screens. Users can make changes on their phones, and the modifications will be relayed back to the at-home Digital Blackboard, he adds.
According to Bodoira, users can also gain access to the Digital Blackboard and make changes from any web browser that's compatible with Microsoft's Silverlight. A demo version (above) of this functionality is provided at http://www.marcobodoira.altervista.org/blackboard/, he adds.
All-in-one kitchen assistant
Gianni Rosa Gallina's KitchenPal is described as a "three-in-one device with touchscreen display, suitable for housewives, housekeepers, and people who love cooking." It includes a pantry and shopping list assistant, a recipe organizer, and a meal planner, he writes.
According to Gallina, the KitchenPal device itself has a compact base unit and a seven-inch touchscreen display. It is designed to work with a smartphone application -- available in versions for both Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7.5 -- that, among other things, can scan barcodes using a device's camera. Cloud-based synchronization using Microsoft's Windows Azure platform is also provided, he adds.
Gallina's proposal does not provide a lot of detail on how the KitchenPal is used, but it does cite the ability to share recipes via Facebook and touches on another particularly interesting aspect. Namely, it's said that the device's user interface is very similar to the one for Windows Phone 7, thanks to the Fleux open-source project. Fleux was designed to mimic the Metro user interface on Windows Mobile 6.x devices via the .NET Compact Framework, but Gallina reports that he was able to port it to the KitchenPal's WIndows Embedded Compact 7 operating system too.
The hardware platform
According to Steel, the "winter" embeddedSPARK 2011 contest hardware consisted of Icop's VDX-6318, featuring an 800MHz Vortex 86SX processor and 256MB of RAM. Contestants were able to build relatively small devices, since the VDX-6318 (below) measures 3.94 x 2.6 inches.
Functionality is comparable to that found in the hardware used in previous contests, and is said to include:
Steel's February posting added that Microsoft would provide contestants with a pre-built Windows Embedded Compact 7 image, Eboot, and bootloader. Also included were to be an SDK (software development kit), BSP (board support package), sample code, and a step-by-step jump start guide, she noted.
The Digital Blackboard and KitchenPal discussed above both used theVDX-6318. As indicated in the diagram of the ARS8VER, however, thatdevice instead employs a main board extracted from Icop's eBox-3310A-MSJK (a device sanctioned by Microsoft for use in previous contests). The eBox employs a 1GHz MSTI PDX-600 (a version of DMP's Vortex86DX), and its motherboard was presumably chosen for the quadricopter because it's lighter than the VDX-6318.
Further information
Further information on the embeddedSPARK 2011 Contest may be found on Microsoft's website, here, while more details on the hardware appear on the Windows Embedded Compact 7 Jump Start Kit page.
Background on the embeddedSPARK 2010 winter and summer contest winners may be found on WindowsForDevices.com here and here, respectively.
Jonathan Angel can be reached at jonathan.angel@ziffdavisenterprise.com and followed at www.twitter.com/gadgetsense.
