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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 at April's 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, to distinguish it from the summer event. Microsoft's website doesn't appear to be using the winter moniker at present, but, in any case, 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."
Now, 75 winners have been chosen to advance to round two of the event. Listed on the embeddedSPARK forum in a post by contest organizer "Steel" (a.k.a Gitte-Lena Andersen, pictured at right), they'll receive an embedded SPARK hardware/software kit (described later in this story) with which to create their projects.
Though the winning proposals are too numerous to list here, some of the more intriguing names include:
New hardware, plus a revived embedded conference
As noted above, the embeddedSPARK 2010 contest concluded at ESC Silicon Valley in San Jose, as the contest had done the year before. But as Microsoft's vague reference to a "major embedded event" above suggested, there's going to be a change of venue -- to the company's Redmond campus, as it turns out.
Steel posted on an embeddedSPARK forum in October, "We are looking into the possibility of reviving a big embedded conference and if that happens we will be moving the embeddedSPARK finals event from ESC Silicon Valley. I am not allowed to talk about this in too much detail, but chances are the event will be held here in Redmond, WA at the Microsoft campus."
In January, Microsoft announced the event Steel was talking about, emailing subscribers to its Windows Embedded InfoBlast newsletter to announce what it's calling the 2011 Windows Embedded DevDive. Replacing the Mobile and Embedded Developer Conference (canceled in 2008), the DevDive has not yet been officially given dates, but Microsoft says it will soon provide further information via a Windows Embedded DevDive Twitter feed.
Meanwhile, Steel had other news for embeddedSPARK 2011 contestants, announcing the hardware that's now being sent to those who advanced to round two.
Last year, Microsoft provided a 3.5-inch SBC (single board computer), Icop's VDX-6326 (for an image and more details, see our previous coverage, here). According to Steel, the "winter" contest will feature Icop's VDX-6318, which yet again features an 800MHz Vortex 86SX processor and 256MB of RAM.
Contestants will theoretically be able to build smaller devices, since the VDX-6326 used the "3.5-inch" SBC format that typically measures 5.8 x 4.0 inches, while the VDX-6318 (above) measures 3.94 x 2.6 inches. Functionality is comparable to that found previously, and is said to include:
Steel's posting added that Microsoft will provide contestants with a pre-built Windows Embedded Compact 7 image, Eboot, and bootloader. Also included will be an SDK (software development kit), BSP (board support package), sample code, and a step-by-step jump start guide, she noted.
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.
