The Code Room Episode 2: Building Mobile Apps and Bluetooth Enabled Kiosks
The pressure cooker of The Code Room is back, this time coming from the Westfield Mall in Seattle. Four experts on Windows Embedded, Compact Framework, and ASP.NET are challenged with building a fully functioning kiosk that can be accessed from a Bluetooth phone application to search for products available in the mall and then use the phone to take a picture of the product and send it to the users MSN Spaces site.
The lovely Jessi Knapp is back hosting the latest episode of The CodeRoom, joined by .NET personality Rory Blyth. The four developers chosen for their expertise in Windows XP Embedded, Compact Framework, and ASP.NET experience were:
Doug Boling, author of Programming Microsoft Windows CE.NET
Sean Liming, author of Windows XP Embedded Advanced
Paul Yao, author of .NET Compact Framework Programming for C#
Jim Wilson, instructor for PluralSight and MSDN Online Columnist
The frantic and not so surprisingly rainy day of The CodeRoom starts with our participants being whisked away in a stretch Hummer to various points around the city to meet with technology experts to get briefed on new technology that is being released this week at Microsoft Mobile and Embedded Developer’s Conference.
The first visit was at the Seattle Conservatory to meet with Mike Hall to learn about the Managed Bluetooth Class Libraries. These .NET managed APIs are being released as part of Microsoft’s Shared Source program and include the classes necessary to orchestrate a Bluetooth pairing and send and receive data over the connection. The team also got sample code to take with them on a USB key.
The next stop was a street corner in downtown where they met with Neil Enns to learn about some of the new features in Visual Studio 2005 for developing Compact Framework applications that use SQL Mobile 2005 databases. The release he was showing was pre-Beta 2 but included very detailed device emulator images and showed off the designer features for mobile devices.
The last stop was along the waterside where the contestants met with Jon Fincher to learn about new XP Embedded Tools and how to use them to build the Windows XP environment for a specific device.
Next it was off to the Westfield Mall for the actual development task. The isolation of the original warehouse style Code Room proved to be to soothing so this time the contestants worked in a glass fronted store space in full view of mall shoppers. Rory was given the task of explaining the rather complicated requirements for this application.
The contestants needed to build a kiosk using Windows XP Embedded that would broadcast a Bluetooth service that another application, also written by the contestants, could use to search for products, stores, and special offers available within the mall. When the consumer found the item they were looking for in the kiosk database, they then should be able to go to that store and take a picture of the item sending it as an email attachment to their MSN Spaces site. And they had to all of this before the mall closes for the day.
The developers used an Audiovox SMT 5600 Windows Smartphone to connect to the Windows XP Embedded kiosk. Thing went smoothly at first as the team got features like taking pictures accomplished along with the basic kiosk features. But when they went to connect the devices over Bluetooth, problems and stress began to show through. They also had problems getting Pocket Outlook to send the email. But after working through the more troublesome technical issues they got stumped by forgetting to call Thread.Start and a misspelling of the class NetworkStream.
In the last 10 minutes though, the team pulled it together and were able to connect all of the devices and query the database. As a test Jessi had the team search for a special on Nikon CoolPix 4100 digital cameras from a retailer in the store. Once they found it the team trekked through the mall to the store where they took a picture of the camera and sent it via email. Jessi rewarded the contestants by buying each of them one of the Nikon digital cameras. With the challenge completed, these contestants qualify for the Team Code-Off later this year.
As always the producers welcome your feedback at www.TheCodeRoom.com and of course here on TheServerSide.NET. So take a look, and let us know what you think!
Paul Ballard is a MCSD, MCAD, and MCSE certified consultant and the President of The Rochester Consulting Partnership, Inc. He has more than 15 years of experience designing and building client/server and web based distributed applications and is currently specializing in Microsoft's .NET technologies as a consultant, speaker, and trainer. Paul is also a volunteer with INETA and an editor for TheServerSide.NET.
The lovely Jessi Knapp is back hosting the latest episode of The CodeRoom, joined by .NET personality Rory Blyth. The four developers chosen for their expertise in Windows XP Embedded, Compact Framework, and ASP.NET experience were:
The frantic and not so surprisingly rainy day of The CodeRoom starts with our participants being whisked away in a stretch Hummer to various points around the city to meet with technology experts to get briefed on new technology that is being released this week at Microsoft Mobile and Embedded Developer’s Conference.
The last stop was along the waterside where the contestants met with Jon Fincher to learn about new XP Embedded Tools and how to use them to build the Windows XP environment for a specific device.
The developers used an Audiovox SMT 5600 Windows Smartphone to connect to the Windows XP Embedded kiosk. Thing went smoothly at first as the team got features like taking pictures accomplished along with the basic kiosk features. But when they went to connect the devices over Bluetooth, problems and stress began to show through. They also had problems getting Pocket Outlook to send the email. But after working through the more troublesome technical issues they got stumped by forgetting to call Thread.Start and a misspelling of the class NetworkStream.