Building a Picture Frame with Windows CE 5.0 - Step 1

1. Boot and run the Windows CE operating system in the Windows CE Emulator, use a custom "Picture Frame" skin on the emulator, display images from a shared folder on the desktop PC
2. Expose a file share from the Windows CE Emulator image, allow users to drop images into the folder and have these displayed in the frame
3. Expose Web Services on the Windows CE Emulator that allow desktop applications to register images to be displayed on the picture frame
4. Move the Windows CE image to "Real" hardware - we will be using the ICOP eBox II reference board, $195.00 - - The board can be ordered from Samuel Phung.

Here's what the CE based Picture Frame will look like.

This is really cool.  

Great work Mike!

Props on the good video and sound quality, better than on most of the MSDN TV / webcast. BTW what was the machine being used? It seemed slightly laggy for being a "standard issue" 3ghz HT machine of today.

Trying to follow along...

When I get to the end of the new platform wizard, I get a messagebox saying that the driver resolver is not available in this release - see the release notes for more detail.  There are no devices in my workspace window.

In the release notes, I was able to find the following:

Driver resolver not available

Driver resolver functionality is not included in this Macallan beta.

To manually add drivers to your OS design, open the Platform Settings dialog box, switch to the Environment tab, and enter the relevant BSP environment variables.

Drivers are normally brought in by platform.bib or common.bib. Examine these files to help determine which dependant drivers should be included.

Right...that explains it <g>

Now, how do I go about getting the appropriate device drivers into my workspace?  Was there something I needed to set up beforehand to get the right ones automatically copied, or do I need to copy them in manually?  If I need to copy them in manually, which ones do I need?

We were using a desktop PC running Camtasia to capture the output from an RDP connection to my Toshiba M200 laptop. This seems to work quite well when recording demos and slides - Camtasia capture the output to an AVI at 1024x768, the MS-Studios team then convert to 800x600 WMV 100k and 300k format.

- Mike

ok, so I'm using a later build of Windows CE 5.0 than the Technology Preview which is downloadable from the web <g>

You should be able to add the drivers manually from the catalog - I'm just installing todays build of Windows CE 5.0, once that's complete I will give you the location in the catalog and the drivers that need to be added.

- Mike

Can MSDN universal subscribers get a full version of that embedded system/program instead of the trial-version?

Windows CE and Windows XP Embedded full product are only available through the distribution channel - to get more information about how to purchase the full product please read the following... - http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/howtobuy/default.aspx 

Would you say that 120 days isn't long enough to evaluate Windows CE ?

- Mike

Would you say that 120 days isn't long enough to evaluate Windows CE ?

>Sure it's long enough but now that I have an MSDN universal subscription I still don't get every tool from ms that I could need as a developer.

Mike, instead of using Camtasia, why not use Windows Media Encoder 9, it comes with Screen capture capabilities, and you don't have to store chunky AVI file.


Mike
WinInsider.com

Camtasia is used by Microsoft Studios to record the sessions, I'm not sure why they are using this rather than Windows Media Encoder - I'm assuming WM Encoder writes directly to WM9 format, right ? - I'm not sure what software Studios use to edit the videos, it could be this needs AVI format, I will ping the producer to see if they've thought about this - and will have a go at recording Step2 of the video using Windows Media Encoder...

- Mike

I'm just installing todays build of Windows CE 5.0, once that's complete I will give you the location in the catalog and the drivers that need to be added.

Have you forgotten about this?  Or perhaps just having trouble finding the time (perfectly understandable)?

nice work

Waiting with baited breath for part 2.

busted

You inspired me to try making my own:

http://www.martindolphin.co.uk/dotnetblog/

agreed, can't wait for part 2! I have my [very] old laptop ready to butcher. Downloaded Win CE yesterday and played around with it. Trying to find out how to push the binaries to the actual photoframe/laptop. Time for a spell on msdn I think.

I am not able to install the win ce 5.0 evaluation software. I downloaded the installation package from microsoft site. All the minimum requirements are met. But it is showing this error- The installation package could not be opened. please verify the package exists and you can access it-.can anybody help.