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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.
Confusingly, Microsoft's website doesn't appear to be using the winter moniker at present. But more important, a comparison with the dates that were being provided last month shows that contestants have gained a few extra weeks in which to work!
The essential facts are now as follows, according to Microsoft:
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.
Contest organizer "Steel" (a.k.a Gitte-Lena Andersen, pictured at right) 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."
Last week, 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 on Nov. 1, announcing the hardware with which those advancing to round two will be provided.
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, this winter's 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 suggests 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 adds.
Further information
In case you're still wavering over whether to enter, further information on the embeddedSPARK 2011 Contest may be found on Microsoft's website, here. Background on the embeddedSPARK 2010 winter and summer contest winners may be found on WindowsForDevices.com here and here, respectively.
