Finally a use for my .Net Micro Framework Widgets Library

So still busy working away on my Child Sleep Safe Imagine Cup entry, this time I have been working on a .Net Micro Framework demonstrator application to show off Serial X10 communication messages.

I am using my Widgets library that I wrote years ago for my OPO runtime on the Micro Framework, that near worked correctly but this does. I am using the widgets for the X10 Configuration screens, a menu system and the about dialog box (as shown)

In other news the PC software is moving along, now with the charting tools being operational

Imagine Cup 2011 UK Finals & The world

So there media has already started churning away, horray says my CV.

Here are a few of the things that have sprouted up on the internet so far:

Microsoft Imagine Cup 2011: UK Finals from Tim Rogers on Vimeo.

A great video showing off the UK Finals (And you can see me at the conference table right at the end of the video)

http://www.imaginecup.com/community/blog/peer-to-peer-volunteer-network--project-ove--wins-first-place-at-imagine-cup-uk-finals

Microsoft has released a Blog post on the main Imagine Cup website about the UK finals where you can see a lovely picture of me and also a comment that I don't believe I ever said (in those particular words) ...creative journalism :)

http://yorkitacademy.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/university-of-york-scores-top-marks-microsoft-imagine-cup-uk-2011/

York University kindly mentioning me winning the UK finals ...twice. Was also nice them mentioning the Degree I never did (I did a Bsc not an Msc, but hope to get the Msc certificate in the post soon)

Shiny new DSLR & working on the Imagine Cup.

Well to mark my trip to New York for the Imagine Cup in July, I went out and got myself a shiny new Nikon d3100 DSLR so I have chance to take some great pictures while there. Beats the 3mp old wreak of a camera I took with me to Warsaw.

So a little more about my project. I've been working on the networking code lately. The implementation I am using is based on Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) This handles the underlying message formatting, synchronisation and transmission so I need only worry about the messages themselves.

The messages that MSMQ pass between the Embedded device and the PC are a serialization of a class containing a variety of fields useful to Child Sleep Safe. As MSMQ has a limit of 4mb per message which should be more than enough really but just to be safe I implemented compression on the message body using System.IO.Compression and to add additional security there is also Encryption using System.Security. These two properties can be user configured so once a message has been received, and is de-serialized to a class these properties are checked and the required actions are performed.

The code I am basing my networking stack on is the MSMQ example as part of the Windows Mobile SDK (Library Book Example App) which is also available for download on MSDN, though my implementation is heavily modified to allow much easier two way communications.

Sorry to all those looking for code samples but I don't want to release anything till after the Imagine Cup finals.

Imagine Cup Embedded Software

For my embedded part of my Imagine Cup entry I had to create a UI to display all the sensor data along with trend data and warnings. Below is an early version of it which I showed off during the UK Imagine Cup finals.

Its all built using C# and Winforms. More of the software design to come.

And attached to the back end of it is lots of Sensors. There are 3 Temperature sensors, 1 light sensors, 1 vibration sensor and 1 sound sensor. These are all supplied by Phidgets and come complete with an Interface Kit.

Also there is an embedded controller unit from Embedded Solutions which I will use to demonstrate the X10 home automation system.

Imagine Cup PC Software

Spent the day working on the PC side of my Imagine Cup entry.

The PC software is design to download sensor information from the embedded device and show trend information and health tips based on the statistics.

The Picture above shows the Sensor Log selection screen.

One of the interesting concepts I am throwing around is the idea of connecting the data to charity based web services, as the sensor data collected would prove great in the hands of researchers.

Tomorrow I hope to work on the graphing system, more images to come as I progress.

Imagine Cup 2011, I will be seeing you in New York

Another year, another Imagine Cup entry. Last year I managed to win the UK finals in the embedded category and rank in the top 6 world wide during the finals hosted in Warsaw.

Last years entry was based around an augmented reality system for the blind and partially sighted individuals to help give them back their independence.

After a great day at Microsoft UK, I won the UK finals for the 2011 Imagine Cup (Its me in the middle):

For this years entry I wanted to do something different, for starters I choose a funny team name: Cycling into trees, as I originally was going to created an advanced computer system for my bicycle in affect creating the worlds safest bicycle. So onto my entry, I am creating a baby monitoring scheme that connects to a home automation system so that the babies environmental conditions are maintained at the correct levels to ensure a good nights sleep and reduce the chance of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

More information on the software design coming soon.

Windows Phone 7 - Great start, but with room for improvement

Well it's been nearly a month since I recieved and started using my shiny new Windows Phone 7 that I won because I cycled into a tree - Thankyou Microsoft!

I've been using it non-stop for gaming, socialising, taking photos and listening to music. From using it day to day I would have to say it's a great OS and a real breath of fresh air in the Phone OS market where there are so many iOS imitaters.

Though like all software, there are still bugs and changes to be made (I know, I used to work for Microsoft and am a software engineer by trade) so here is my list of things that bugged me that I hope are changed, or added to in the coming updates to WP7. Now remember everyone, Rome wasn't built in a day and the iPhone didn't even have an App Store for over a year and has already gone through 4 major system revisions.

Lack of tile colours - It seems strange that the number of colours to choose from were so few and some key colours were missing eg. White

Update Image album thumbnail - As a user you can't select which picture in a photo album appears as a the albums thumbnail (such as what you can in iPhoto)

Better Quality Image & Video tile thumbnails - When you select a video to pin to the home screen, the image quality is terrible compared to the original, the algorithms or method to extract the thumbnail needs to be improved.

Selecting position in Video - Although you can press the right or left arrows to scroll through a video file, if it is a large file this can often be cumbersome and slow. It would be nice if you could actually use the slider to select the offset within the video.

Homebrew Dev - I guess a lot of devs will be with me on the fact you can't even make your own games / apps without paying the developer charge, even if you have no wish to upload to the Marketplace.

Selectable default search engine - I understand it is a Microsoft OS and they wish to promote Bing, however it would be nice to see the ability to use other search engines when the search button is pressed (eg. Wikipedia, Google)

Split Marketplace results - When I search for an app, or sony on Marketplace, it would be nice to be able to sort the results by type so I don't get a list of albums when I search for an app.

Simple Image tools - The camera and image viewer is missing some rather simple tools such as crop and rotate. Currently though this is getting filled in with free apps

Move Images around - It seems obvious with the use of albums for images that a user may wish to move images around or create new image albums rather than having a huge Camera Roll album.

Select which Facebook / Live Images to show - Its nice being able to sync with online services but if you are like me and have lots of albums this can get annoying, it would be nice to selectively hide image albums.

Choose which Image folder to display in the Panorama - Bit obvious really.

Memory Leak in Marketplace - When viewing the entire marketplace list, if you scroll right to the end the phone *seriously* lags, once the application exists the phone can become near useless until a restart. (May just be due to excessive memory usage by the Marketplace app)

Improve Mac Sync tool - Being able to select individual songs / images would be a huge boost!

It will be great to see what other people think, and forgive me if you can do some of these things already, I keep finding out new things on my WP7 everyday