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If you're interested in learning more about the products or solutions discussed in this episode, click on any of the below links for free, in-depth information:

Websites:

• Getting started with Windows 8 Apps
• How to Sell Your Apps and Make Money in the Windows Store
• Attend a Windows 8 Developer Camp and Hackathon in your area!

Blogs & Articles:

• Jerry Nixon’s Blog
• Learn more about Reactive Extensions
• Introduction to Rx

Videos:

• Microsoft DevRadio: Managing Your Windows 8 Enterprise Apps with Windows Intune
• Microsoft DevRadio: Your Top Windows Store Questions Answered

Virtual Labs:

• Windows 8 Virtual Labs

Download Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows Desktop

Visual Drawing.Net

Many years ago, when Microsoft .NET was newly released, I was working in a company as Software Consultant and I was in duty of helping our customers to jump start .net development and teach them the new .net programming languages C# and Visual Basic .NET in a condensed and structured way. Most of the developers I assisted were Visual Basic 6.0 developers and many of them were not very familiar with Object Oriented Programming and Design. I needed to find the best way to explain OOP. So, the best example to teach OPP was to use a base Shape class having a virtual Draw method and decorate this Shape class with all aspects of OOP. Next to this, I was also teaching them the design time features of Visual Studio .NET. After these workshops were completed and everyone in the world learned .NET, I had lots of shapes beside me; I decided to make something useful with them, which maybe would be useful to others. Thus, I developed a shape-development tool and a development environment that integrates with Visual Studio .NET.

After I started to work as a Software Architect for various companies in Germany in year 2004 and I had more responsibilities during my work life, I totally forgot that I developed this tool. Just recently, when I was looking to my file archives, I saw it again. I refreshed and updated it now that it also works with newer versions of Visual Studio .NET including Visual Studio 2008, 2010 and 2012. I hope you will like it. It is free and you can download the full source code on http://visualdrawingdotnet.codeplex.com and find the documentation under www.erdalhalici.com.

...

Background

Visual Drawing.Net is a shape-development tool providing a development environment that integrates with Visual Studio .NET 2005/2008/2010/20012 and all related express editions.

Visual Drawing.Net speeds up the development of graphical applications based on the vector graphics. All the shapes that are created using Visual Drawing.Net are programmable and their attributes and properties can be changed at any time during the run time of the containing application. Shapes are designed using object oriented programming paradigm supporting visual inheritance in the Visual Studio .NET 2005/2008/2010/2012 and all Express editions development environment.

Visual Drawing.Net is a shape-based drawing tool a wealth of built-in shapes that developers can drag onto the drawing surface to create drawings; many third-party tools for use in Visual Studio .NET are available as well. Sometimes, however, when no built-in or third-party shapes exist to solve a specific drawing problem, a shape developer must create custom shapes that have a particular appearance or behave in a certain way at any time. Once created, custom shapes become reusable components that can be used in applications or compiled into shape libraries to be used in the applications. The capacity to use programmable shapes is one of the features that make Visual Drawing.Net such a powerful drawing tool.

Developing a shape involves creating the geometry of the shape and specifying and implementing its behavior. By choosing the correct combination of geometry and behavior, a shape developer can create shapes that model the objects in the real world that they represent. Shape geometry refers to a shape’s appearance, and consists of the lines, angles, and formatting of a shape, and whether a shape is rotated. It also includes the way a shape is structured. Whether, for example, it is a simple shape or a shape container that groups several simple shapes together. You create shape geometry by drawing a shape, using the Visual Drawing.Net on design view. You can also create or extend shape geometry by writing code in the code view.

Why Use Visual Drawing.Net?
Some of the reasons for using Visual Drawing.Net to develop shapes are as follows:

• Visual Drawing.Net is a development and productivity tool for developers who design and develop graphical applications. It provides a custom work environment that integrates with Visual Studio .NET 2003 and Visual Studio .NET 2005 and all Express editions to make it easier to specify, create, build, test, and maintain shapes.
• Shapes are extendable. You can create your own shape by overriding the shape method MakePath and ones a Shape created, it can be used in the Shape Container. The Shape Container will provide design time support for your shape to rotate, shear, move, warp, shade, fill with a color or using a brush etc.
• Visual Drawing.Net provides consistency in newly developed shapes. You could implement the same behavior in a variety of ways in the Shape Containers (for example, by using visual inheritance in all Visual Studio .NET and Express Editions). With Visual Drawing.Net, behaviors are applied the same way every time.
• Visual Drawing.Net stores shapes in Shape Containers, which is also a Shape object and all attributes and behaviors associated with shapes you create independently using any .net supported programming language( C#, VB.Net etc.), making it easier for teams of designers, developers, and testers to work cooperatively, or for different aspects of shape creation to be handled by different teams or companies.

When to Use Visual Drawing.Net?
Use Visual Drawing.Net, when you want to do any of the following:

• Create programmable shapes that have complex attributes and behaviors, such as multi-state shapes.
• Create shapes that are part of a hierarchy of similar shapes or sets of shapes that have minor variations.
• Create libraries of shapes and maintain them over time, including making changes to numerous shapes at the same time.
• Be able to test shapes you have developed to ensure they implement specified behaviors correctly.
• Create shapes as part of a shape-development team that divides labor amongst shape designers, developers, and testers, or outsource parts of the shape development process to other organizations.
• Store shape information independently rather than in the applications in which the shapes are used.

....

The CodeProject article continues getting you started, adding shapes, etc.

The sample downloaded, compiled and ran for me with no problems, the first time.

Here's a snap;

I liked seeing samples in both C# and VB. Nice...

I mentioned documentation?

...

I also mentioned source for the entire thing, and not just the CodeProject sample (which has the binaries for the real meaty part)?

Yep, just a CodePlex away...

http://visualdrawingdotnet.codeplex.com

Here's a snap of the actual component Solution (for which the latest check-in, as of the writing of this, compiled fine and easy..)

So again, you not only get a cool project, but all the source that makes up that project too!

.NET Micro Framework Toolbox

Project Description
This project is a sub-framework for the .NET Micro Framework that gives support for several electrical components in the form of drivers NETMF-devices.

What's in the project?
In this project is support for multiple devices by adding several drivers in the form of classes. See the documentation for more details about them.

How to download the source code
All source code is available on Codeplex. To download the latest release, follow these two simple steps:
1. Browse through the latest build using this direct link: http://netmftoolbox.codeplex.com/SourceControl/BrowseLatest
2. Click on the big download-button

If you need support
The developers and maintainer of this library are all active at http://forums.netduino.com/

If you encounter any problems with Netduino hardware, it's best to post a thread on those forums.

Also, there's the Discussions tab.

Note about Visual Basic support
Although the framework code is completely written in C#, all samples are available for both C# and Visual Basic. This requires .NET Micro Framework 4.2 or higher.

Here's an example if one of the classes/devices in action;

Netduino HD44780 Snake

I [Stefan Thoolen] just updated the .NETMF Toolbox with some additional samples for both Visual C# and VB.NET. One of them is this awesome game which demonstrates custom character support for the HD44780 text LCDs:

So what kind of devices are supported?

Supported devices

And it's not just all about hardware devices. Check out these classes

And the source for all of this is available too!

VB Gadgeteer Webserver, SDK 4.2 QFE2 and Spider Premium Library's

This is an small sample code to show how to build our basic gadgeteer web server using VB with Spider and the 4.2 RTM Premium library's.

Start Visual Studio with a new gadgeteer project and copy/paste...That's all! (remember add library's references)

...

• Step-by-Step tutorial from dev.windows.com
• Part 2 complete code

[01:21] Step 1: Use a File Picker to get an image file
[09:13] Step 2: Bind UI controls to file data
[12:10] Step 3 : Save and load state

• Step-by-Step tutorial from dev.windows.com
• Part 2 complete code

[00:20] Step 2 Continued: Add controls and content to a page
[20:59] Step 3: Adapt the page layout to different orientations and views

• Step-by-Step tutorial from dev.windows.com
• Part 2 complete code

[00:22] Step 1: Add pages and navigation
[05:02] Step 2: Add controls and content to a page

• Step-by-Step tutorial from dev.windows.com
• Part 2 complete code

[02:22] Step 1: Using SuspensionManager
[04:20] Step 2: Save the app's state
[10:34] Step 3: Restore the app's state

• Step-by-Step tutorial from dev.windows.com
• Part 1 complete code

[01:43] Before you start
[02:23] Step 1: Create a new project in Visual Studio
[06:14] Step 2: Start the app
[07:27] Step 3: Modify your start page
[14:56] Step 4: Create an event Handler
[17:25] Step 5: Style the start page

Lucian shows us UPnP for Windows 8, how we might use it and generally helps us understand it by writing code for it...

UPnP code for Windows 8

This code plays audio on UPnP speakers. If you have DLNA speakers ("Digital Lifestyle Networking Alliance") they are based on UPnP and it will also work on them. 

Instead of following this article, there's a key alternative technique that's better - using the new Windows 8 support for "Play To" (this link goes to Windows SDK sample code for the PlayTo contract+API). PlayTo is far simpler, better-tested, and preferable to implementing all this UPnP stuff yourself. It takes only a few lines of code. Users of your app-store app will then be able to use the Devices charm to make your app stream its video or audio to their TV or speakers or picture-frames, so long as the device's manufacturer has provided Windows-8-certified drivers.

(Note that certified drivers are only needed for app-store apps; they're not needed for desktop apps. There's also one older technique, using a COM library called UPNP.dll dating back to XP, but it isn't allowed for app-store apps).

I wrote this code because my device doesn't yet have windows-8-certified drivers, and because I wanted to learn about UPnP. More generally, the code might help you understand the UPnP underpinnings of how things work under the hood when you use PlayTo. 

Contents

1. The article describes the raw UPnP protocols, i.e., the UDP and TCP messages involved between devices.
2. Next it shows code that implements those raw UDP and TCP communications explicitly, both for device-discovery (SSDP) and for device control (UPnP).

   There are two forms of the code:  .NET45 code (runs on any .NET45 machine but not allowed on app store) and WinRT code (runs on Windows tablets, allowed on app-store, requires Windows8).

3. Next it shows where you can use HttpClient and VB's XML-literals, for a higher-level abstraction rather than doing raw TCP programming.  
4. Next it shows how to use WinRT device-enumeration APIs, rather than implementing SSDP manually. This is a cleaner way of doing things, and will run on Windows tablets and is allowed on the app-store, but requires Windows 8. 

Testing with UPnP devices

Here are three UPnP devices you can test this code on:

• I went out and bought a Sony SA-NS300 wifi speaker. This is a UPnP device (but doesn't yet as of September 2012 have windows-8-certified drivers).  
• I downloaded Developer Tools for UPnP Technologies. This has a program called MediaRenderer.exe in it, which you can test against (but it also isn't yet windows-8-certified).  
• I set up a different machine on the same network, ran Windows Media Player on it, and did Stream > AllowRemoteControl. (This has to be on a different machine: it doesn't work on the same machine). This technique is also described in the Windows SDK "PlayTo sample". It is windows-8-certified.

Here's a picture of my laptop simultaneously sending audio wirelessly to all three devices!

..."

His great article starts with UPnP information and then starts diving deep into the code...

UPnP protocol

UPnP has superb documentation at www.upnp.org. 

• UPnP Device Architecture - explains how the shared UPnP protocols work, including service discovery. This is common information for all UPnP protocols. The rest of the documents are specific to media-playing. 
• UPnP AV Architecture - explains the particular case of media rendering, from a DMS (Digital Media Source) to a DMR (Digital Media Renderer)
• ConnectionManager:1 - documents the API of the ConnectionManager interface, used to determine which protocols are supported 
• AVTransport:1 - documents the API of the AVTransport interface, used to tell the DMR which media-source to play, and to start/stop it.

When media is played over UPnP, there are three parties involved:

Control Point - this party tells the others when and what to play

Digital Media Renderer (DMR) - the speakers/tv. They can be told what URL to play, and can be told to start/stop. 

Digital Media Source (DMS) - where the media comes from, i.e. it serves up the URL that was requested by the DMR. 

You can imagine lots of ways this might work. Maybe your computer is the control point, and the DMS is some archive on a server in your attic, and the DMR is your television set. Or maybe your computer is the DMS, and the control point is a tablet or cell phone or remote control, and the DMR is your set of Wi-Fi speakers.

...

One of the things I thought cool was how he mixed in ".Net"  and WinRT sample versions. (Oh and that he used Visual Basic.Net for course!

Higher level of abstraction: use WinRT Device Enumeration

Actually, Windows 8 has SSDP discovery built in. We can remove our existing SSDP code and replace it with "WinRT Device Enumeration". I described win8 device-enumeration more fully in a separate article: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/458550/Device-enumeration-in-Windows-8.

No WinRT probes by device-type. Recall that we send an SSDP probe for all devices that have the device-type "urn:schemas-upnp-org:device:MediaRenderer:1". Well, Windows sends out SSDP probes for absolutely all devices -- but it not longer lets us query its results by device-type.

What we'll do instead is rely on the fact that all MediaRenderer:1 devices have a RenderingControl service and a ConnectionManager interface, and (optionally) an AVTransport interface. So we'll look for any device at all that has these interfaces.

It raises an interesting philosophical question -- what if there exist some devices whose type is not MediaRenderer:1, but they expose ConnectionManager and AVTransport interfaces? Should our code work with them? What will they do? I don't know! 

No WinRT probes by service-type string. Also, our own SSDP implementation looked for services with type "urn:schemas-upnp-org:service:ConnectionManager:1...

In short, if you've ever wondered what UPnP was, how "Play To" works and how you might be able to use them, this is a must read article. Imagine mixing in this with some of the hardware projects we've highlighted here in the past... hum...

Without further ado...

Getting started with C# and Visual Basic: Hello World and Blog reader samples

This sample includes the companion code for the Microsoft Visual Basic and C# tutorials in the Getting started node of the Windows Dev Center.

Specifically, this sample includes code for:

• Part 1: Create a "Hello, world!" app

  This sample and tutorial demonstrate how to create a simple "Hello, world"Windows 8 app using Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) with Microsoft Visual Basic or C#.

• Part 2: Manage app lifecycle and state

  This sample and tutorial update the "Hello, world" app to respond to lifecycle events, and save app and session data.

• Create a blog reader

  This sample and tutorial demonstrate some basic principles of Windows Store app development using Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML). It shows how to modify the Items Page, Split Page, and Basic Page templates in Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 to create a complete blog reader app that downloads the RSS and Atom feeds for several Windows-related blogs. It uses custom styles and animations to make a distinctive user interface, and has an app bar for navigation between pages. It also shows how to adapt the UI to different orientations and views, and save and restore app state.

This sample is written in XAML. For the HTML version, see the Getting started with JavaScript: Hello World and Blog reader samples .

..."

Part 4: Create a blog reader (Windows Store apps using C#/VB and XAML)

We introduce the essential code and concepts you need to create a Windows Store app using C# or Visual Basic. You'll use Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) to define the UI, and your selected language to write the app logic.

Note  You can download the complete Microsoft Visual Studio project for this tutorial from the Dev Center Sample Gallery. Download the source code. You can also view the source code on the download page.

If you'd rather use another programming language, see:

• Create your first Windows Store app using JavaScript
• Create your first Windows Store app using C++

Roadmap: How does this topic relate to others? See: Roadmap for Windows Store apps using C# or Visual Basic.

Before you start...

• This is the last tutorial in a series. Before you start this tutorial, we recommend that you read Part 1: Create a "Hello, world!" app, Part 2: Manage app lifecycle and state, and Part 3: Navigation, layout, and views. This tutorial introduces new concepts, and adds to concepts from the previous tutorials.
• You can complete this tutorial without reading the previous ones. However, concepts from previous tutorials might not be discussed in detail here.
• You can download the complete Visual Studio project for this tutorial from the Dev Center Sample Gallery. You can also view the source code on the download page. Download the source code.

Objectives

In this tutorial, we take a quick tour of the features that you'll use to build Windows Store apps. Through the process of creating a simple blog reader app, we introduce concepts that are core to development with XAML, including layout, controls, templates, and data binding. We learn how to use the page templates and navigation that are built into Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows 8 to quickly start our app development. We then learn how to use custom styles to modify the look of our app, and how to adapt the UI to various layouts and views. Finally, we briefly discuss integrating our app with Windows 8 and publishing it to the Windows Store. By the time you complete this tutorial, you'll be prepared to start building your own Windows Store apps.

In this article

• Before you start...
• Objectives
• Hello World
• Creating Windows Windows Store apps in Visual Studio
• Specifying app capabilities
• Getting data into an app
• Defining the app layout in XAML
• Adding controls and content
• Displaying data
• Adding pages and navigation
• Adding an app bar
• Adding animations and transitions
• Creating a consistent look with styles
• Adapting to different layouts
• Managing app lifecycle and state
• Adding a splash screen and logo
• What's next

..."

Here's a snap of the C# sample;

And here's it running;

What's always fun is taking a sample and tweaking it. With very few tweaks I took this Windows Team Blogs RSS Reader and turned it into a very simple Channel 9 Coding4Fun RSS Reader...

Of course this is no where near complete, but it's still a fun starting point. The article and sample provide some great Windows 8 App development pointers, techniques and ideas, enough to hopefully get you started on your own app's!

Windows Store apps for Absolute Beginners with JavaScript

Over the course of 31 lessons, Bob will teach you the fundamentals of Windows Store app development by walking you through building the Contoso Cookbook Hands On Labs in JavaScript.

Windows Store apps for Absolute Beginners with C#

Over the course of 34 lessons, Bob will teach you the fundamentals of Windows Store app development by walking you through building the Contoso Cookbook Hands On Labs in C#.

Visual Basic Fundamentals: Development for Absolute Beginners

A 25 episode series that teaches the fundamentals of Visual Basic programming. The series walks you through getting the tools, writing code, debugging and customizations.

C# Fundamentals: Development for Absolute Beginners

A 24 episode series that will teach you the fundamentals of C# programming. Tune in to learn concepts applicable to videos games, mobile environments, and client applications.

HTML5 & CSS3 Fundamentals: Development for Absolute Beginners

A 21 part series that teaches aspiring web developers the concepts of web pages, CSS3 styles and HTML5 features.

Javascript Fundamentals: Development for Absolute Beginners

A 21 part series that teaches the fundamentals of JavaScript programming. Tune in to learn concepts applicable to web based video games enhanced user interfaces and dynamic web pages.

Windows Phone 7 Development for Absolute Beginners

A 64 part video series that teaches beginners how to build simple WP7 applications. The series will walk you through getting the tools, knowing what an if statement is, using the GPS built into the phone and much more!

Announcing: .NET MF 4.2 upgrade for all Netduino hardware

I'm very pleased to announce that the Netduino v4.2 firmware was officially released this morning (simultaneously with the .NET Micro Framework 4.2 QFE2 PK and SDK).
This upgrade is being provided for all Netduino hardware, both the traditional Netduinos and the new Netduino Go.

This exciting new release includes a number of major enhancements over .NET MF 4.1:

• 50% more RAM for Netduino Plus (42KB vs 28KB)
• Visual Basic support
• New WinUSB drivers (for those who had occasional BSODs)
• StringBuilder and other new classes
• New core AnalogInput and PWM classes
• Garbage collector bugfixes
• More bugfixes; see netmf.codeplex.com

Users are welcomed to upgrade to their boards to .NET Micro Framework 4.2 at the time of their choice. The new SDK supports both 4.1 and 4.2 projects, so you will be able to use both boards with the same SDK. We will continue supporting users on both versions for the time being.

Instructions and downloads:

...

Click through for all the instructions and downloads...

MS_Notepad_Clone

A clone of MS Notepad designed to reduce the work of coding the basics of an improved clone of MS Notepad. Created by CuBe Laboratories, it has all of the features of the original notepad, like the find/findnext/replace/replaceall functions, the open/save/saveas functions, and a few new ones such as the one that allows rtf resources to be opened so that they can be used for help files.

Once you install this, you get a new Project Template.

Creating a new Project with this template gives you what you'd expect, your own Notepad app, now ready for your tweaking and extending needs...

Say I want to make my own branded Notepad...

Yeah, I know a little "out there" but still if you've ever wanted to create your own Notepad just to add "this little feature" to it, need a customized Notepad like app and don't want to start from scratch or just looking for something a little different, you're just a Template download/install and New Project away...

Marvin's Arena

Marvin's Arena is a free and entertaining programming game. The game is designed to easily learn programming in any .NET compatible language. It is suited for new programmers to gain experience with the .NET languages and development tools as well as for experienced programmers to enhance efficient development.

You create a robot and let it fight against one or more opponents in a tournament. The first robot can be written in only a few minutes but complex robots might take some time for perfection. More experienced developers can even create robots working in a team to fight other teams.

The robots can move, scan for opponents and fire bullets and rockets to survive in the battle!

About Marvin's Arena

• Getting Started - What is Marvin's Arena and what can you do with it
• Features - Currently available features
• System Requirements - System requirements
• About - Further information about the author and tools

Downloading and Installing

• Installing Visual Studio - Install Visual Studio
• Downloading and Installing Marvin's Arena - Install Marvin's Arena and Visual Studio Starter Kit
• Setting Up Your Robot - Create your first robot project
• Share - Share your robot with other developers

Creating Robots

• Tutorials - Different level tutorials
• FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
• Code Snippets - Useful and less useful code snippets

Tournament

• Ladder - Ranking of the best robots

Development

• Roadmap - Release and feature plan
• Framework Architecture - Documentation of the architecture of Marvin's Arena

Marvin's Arena (CodePlex)

This is the source code of the engine and backend if you just want to create robots please visit the project website!

Current Features
* Battle Manager to create a tournament
* 3D Battle Engine that simulates the tournament
* Sandbox to run every robot in a secured environment with maximum security assigned
* Single and Team tournaments with full tournament brackets
* Configurable game rules
* XML tournament result
* Map Editor
* Visual Studio integration and Code Editor

Note, if you want to run the engine via the source (i.e. from the CodePlex source code), take a quick read of the Documentation. Also when I grabbed the latest check-in, there was a couple things I had to tweak to get it to compile and run.

a) Change the Start-Up project to MarvinsArina

b) Grab a copy of of the ScintillaNet.dll from \Src\Main_VB\MarvinsArena\ and copy it to \Src\Main\MarvinsArena\

c) Make sure the 2DBattleEngine and 3DBattleEngine projects build.

At this point, all was well for me and I was up and running.

Yep, you get this cool app, get to build bots that can kill each other and you get the source for everything too!

Here’s a few more links you might find interesting:

• Building Battling Bots with DumbBots.Net

Recovering Gracefully from Loss of Skeletal Tracking (Kinect For Windows)

The Kinect For Windows SDK v1.0 is awesome, but it doesn't recover well when it loses sight of you whilst tracking your skeleton. With a timer control and a little code to restart the KinectSensor, you can recover is 5 seconds or less.

This is the same code I use in GesturePak, a gesture recording and recognition SDK for Kinect for Windows.

Create a new WPF application and add a reference to the Kinect SDK assembly:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Kinect\v1.0\Assemblies\Microsoft.Kinect.dll

You don't need any controls for this demo. It simply turns the form red when tracking, and white when not tracking.

The basic idea is that when we lose tracking for the first time, you kick off a timer to fire it's Tick event in 1/2 a second. In the timer Tick handler you stop the Kinect Sensor, Start it up again, and then set the timer's Interval to a more reasonable amount of time. I use 5 seconds, but you should test it in your app. If it's too short, you don't give the Kinect time to track you, and if it's too long and it doesn''t track you, you could be sitting and waiting too long. 5 seconds seems reasonable to me.

When the state changes from not tracking to tracking, you simply disable the timer.

Here's the code in both C# and VB.NET. In each case you can replace the default code behind MainWindow.xaml and run it. The C# app has to have a reference to System.Windows.Forms

...

Project Information URL: http://carlfranklin.net/blog/2012/4/30/recovering-gracefully-from-loss-of-skeletal-tracking-kinect.html

Contact Information:

• Blog: http://carlfranklin.net/blog/
• Twitter: @carlfranklin

• [0:24] ASP.NET Open Sourcing Discussion with Scott Hanselman (Brady Gaster, Scott Hanselman)
• [2:22] PowerShell Scripting Games, All in One Page, Registration Information, The Announcement, Top 10 Reasons for competing in the 2012 Scripting Games, The judging criteria (Ed Wilson)
• [3:35] Using NuGet PowerShell to Replace Missing Macros in Dev 11 (John Robbins)
• [4:49] FIX: April 2012 Update for Visual Studio 11 Beta, April 2012 Updates to Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Beta (x86 and x64) - (English) on MSDN Subscriber Download [Note direct link may not work due to MSDN Subscriber site architecture. If not, should be listed in New downloads or our can search for it]. POST SHOW UPDATE: Since the recording of this show more information has been released as well as downloads for the public. Please see this blog post Improving how we update Visual Studio for more information.
• [5:46] Talk: What's new in VB11 & Talk: Async Part 1 - the message-loop, and the Task type (Lucian Wischik)
• [8:31] Quick Tip: Show WinRT XAML Binding Errors (Shawn Wildermuth)
• [9:41] Installing enterprise metro apps without using Microsoft Store (Lee Stott), TechNet 's How to Add and Remove Apps (aka Sideload)
• [10:42] Optimize [WinPhone7 App] Startup Time(Mike Battista)
• [12:17] 10+ powerful debugging tricks with Visual Studio (Ivan Shcherbakov)

Picks of the Week!

• Brian's Pick of the Week: [13:39] Windows Phone Proposal- The Ultimate in Romance
• Dan's Pick of the Week: [14:25] KMotion Capturer, the 3ds Max Script generator

DIY Dashboard

The dashboard I’m posting here have the following features:

• RPM lights
• Gear indicator
• Pit limiter, rev limiter and low fuel indicators
• 5 general purpose switches and buttons
• 1 rotary encoder for dialing

I bought all the components that I needed (with the exception of the Arduino itself) in a regular electronic component shop. You can see the parts list below and it’s also included in the RAR file at the end of the post. The total cost of this project was about U$ 27,00 excluding the Arduino (43,00 brazilian reais) and was really fun to do it. For it to work, I had to assemble everything into a perfboard, code the Arduino firmare to receive the data from the computer and light up the whole thing and also code the server software that grabs the data from the iRacing API and send it through a USB serial connection to the Arduino.

...

In the pictures below you can take a look on how it looks like inside the dashboard. I don’t have much electronics and soldering experience so it turned out not that beautiful, but hey, it works! You can also see the schematics for all the electronic components.

...

I’m releasing all the schematics, parts list, source code and firmware for this project. In the RAR is included:

• VB.NET source code for interfacing with iRacing API, Arduino serial port and PPJoy DLL
• iWrapClient.dll and PPJoyDLL.dll (I coded it too, but I’m releasing only the DLL)
• Arduino source code ready for upload to the board
• Schematics
• Parts list

You've got to love the Windows 95 cup. I've got one of those somewhere I think...lol

Anyway...

As he promised the rar includes the schematic, parts list and the code;

If you've wondered what it would be like to add a "real world" interface to a game this might be a good weekend project for you...

Kinect controls Arduino wired Servos using Visual Basic 2010

In this project, I use left and right hand movements in Kinect to control the rotation of two servos tied to Arduino Uno, which in turn moves the left and right arms of a makeshift stickman. The middleware is written in Visual Basic 2010 and is based on the Microsoft Kinect SDK beta 2.

There are plenty of C++ and C# code examples to interface Kinect to other gadgets, but not many Visual Basic examples. So I figured this project could help folks with mostly VB skills to start hacking Kinect with Arduino.

HOW THIS STUFF WORKS
Kinect keeps track of 20 skeleton joints for each player. To simplify this project, I extract the coordinates of the left hand and right hand joints only. Then I pass those joint coordinates to an Arduino UNO after I do some scaling in Visual Basic from computer screen size to servo angles.

I modified the VB code in the Microsoft Quickstart samples because it's well documented and comes with good tutorials. So anyone can review these tutorials to learn more about how this VB code works with Kinect.

The changes I made to the sample VB code were mostly to facilitate serial communications with Arduino as well as to map screen coordinates to the servos angles. In this project, I capture the Y (vertical) movement of the HandLeft and HandRight joints. It should be easy to modify my code to add more servos and joints.

WIRING
For this project, I used two TG9e micro servos powered by the Arduino Uno connected to my PC via USB. For bigger servos with more power needs, you may have to power them separately or else the Arduino will act erratically.

I labeled one servo as the Left Hand servo while the other as the Right Hand servo. If you confuse the servos at some point, the fix is often as simple as changing a line of code instead of rewiring.

Left Servo ---> Arduino Digital Pin 9
Right Servo ---> Arduino Digital Pin 11

For debugging purposes, you may wish to consider testing your build with one servo before adding another.

HOW TO APPLY MY CODE
In addition to the instructions, you can view my step-by-step screen captured stills. Please click the "i" in the upper left corner of each photo to see the full resolution still.

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HARDWARE PARTS
- Microsoft Kinect
- Arduino Uno
- Micro Servos X 2 (I used TG9e micro servos)
- Breadboards and wires
SOFTWARE COMPONENTS
Arduino IDE 1.0
http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/software
Microsoft Kinect SDK V1 beta2
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/kinectforwindows/download/
Coding4Fun Kinect Toolkit 1.1
http://c4fkinect.codeplex.com/releases/view/76271#DownloadId=300233
Microsoft Visual Basic Express 2010
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-editions/visual-basic-express
.NET Framework 4
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa569263
Microsoft DirectX SDK - June 2010 or later version
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=6812
Runtime for Microsoft DirectX 9
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=35
Microsoft Kinect Code4Fun Quickstart VB code (You will overwrite this with my modified version)
http://files.ch9.ms/coding4fun/KinectForWindowsSDKQuickstarts.zip

If you're an Arduino builder, a Kinect hardware hacker or Visual Basic dev, there's a little here for all of you...

Download the source code for Understanding the My Namespace

Download the source code for Understanding Event Driven Programming

Download the source code for Filtering and Managing Data...

Download the source code for Working with Collections