On November 27, 2012 at the Windows 8 Developer meeting, I gave a very high level overview of DirectX 3D. This demo included how to render simple triangles as well as how to create a model and render it as a mesh in a Windows Store Application.
Hope to spend more time on this in the near future!
-twb
Today, I’m proud to announce that SeaWolf is available for all types of Windows 8 devices including both ARM and x86 devices. SeaWolf is a high-end Windows 8 Modern UI application developed by Software Logistics, LLC that is used for Coastal Navigation in US waters,
SeaWolf uses an Azure back end to provide high performance map data. The map data is pre-generated using the following a process previously documented on my blog.
Over the next few months we have big plans for SeaWolf to include a possible DirectX 3D version as well as considerable social integration and crowd sourcing of points of interest.
Enjoy!
-twb
Since my last update about 1 1/2 month ago work client work has been extremely busy, I’ve spent a good chunk of time getting a high-end Windows 8 application ready to submit to the marketplace. Oh and I spent a week out in Redmond at Build 2012. Needless to say my “hobby” of building a quad copter suffered from lack of attention.
Since my last update, I did however undertake a major shift in technology. I went from using three STM8S 8 bit micro controllers to one STM32F0 32 bit micro controller. In a nut shell my software was working great about 99.999% of the time, however for this type of application, it really needs to be 100%. Even a failure 1 out of every 100,000 times could be very dangerous with the sharp propellers and uncontrolled flight. 100,000 seems like a pretty high number but considering my flight control loop operates at 200 times a second, it does happen. I think the problem is that my inter-processor communications was just to chatty, I had considerable amount of code firing and handling messages between the micro-controllers and the .NETMF host. The communications state machines handling these messages ended up being fairly complex and very timing critical. To achieve a 200Hz update rate, we needed to have very fast SPI communications. To achieve very fast SPI communications the interrupt handlers needed to be very efficient. At one point I was troubleshooting using my data analyzer and measuring the microseconds required to process the data, there just wasn’t much breathing room between bytes.
So enter new hardware and an STM32FO. My initial prototype board also has an STM32F4 on it. The idea is to implement the GO! Bus protocol V1.5 and have a fully functional GO! module that is self contained and performs all the functions required to maintain stable flight on the quad copter. Then periodically send state information such as position, time, pitch, roll, heading back to the GO! main board to allow for creating command and control functionality in C# and NetMF. This was the primary goal, but in the original three STM8S architecture, the GO! main board primarily acted as a message forwarder.
Here’s my new stand alone Hardware, the STM32F4 running NETMF is in the upper left and the STM32F0 is in the bottom right.
So far I have about 80% of the 8 Bit C code for the STM8S’s ported to the STM32F0. I’m finding that unlike using the three STM8S, most of my code is actually being used to control flight, not handle communications. It was easier than I had expected and as much as I really don’t like using Eclipse, it’s far better than the ST Visual Developer that I had been using on the STM8. I found this great article on getting going with 32 bit development for STM using eclipse.
-twb
I’m happy to announce that SMUG (Southern Most User Group, Developer Edition) will be
Here’s is our tentative agenda, venues to be announced in December:
February 6, 2012
February 7
February 8
If you are interested in attending, please sign up at http://smugdev2012.eventbright.com
If you are interested in speaking please send an email to beth@bethyork.com with an overview of your topic. We will probably only have one track so depending on the number of speakers we may limit talks to 20-30 minutes.
Speakers will get a highly coveted SMUG speakers shirt, and all attendees will get T-Shirts.
Note – last year sponsorship was light so plan on covering most of your meal, lodging, Travel and entertainment expenses. If you are interested in sponsoring, please let kevinw@software-logistics.com know. We’ll be working on getting some discounted hotel rates, but feel free to make your own reservations.
-twb
Announcing Meeting Number 2 of the Tampa Bay NETMF Hacking Group.
To register for the event, please go to http://tbnetmf1211.eventbrite.com
Our second meeting will also be held at the Microsoft Office in Tampa on November 21st at 6:30 PM. This meeting will be in two parts, the first part going from 6:30-8:00 and will be lecture/hands on. The second part will be Show-and-Tell as well as freestyle hacking on your hardware. If you did something cool between the meetings, come prepared to share!
After a brief recap/intro for any new members, this meeting we will explore basic communications and digital signals with your Netduino .NET Microframeworks device. Although we will be using a NETMF device the same basic principles will apply to other microcontrollers
Here’s a relatively cheap shopping list of parts to help support your geek habit that will be useful for this meeting:
Next month, we will be exploring options for getting these small devices on the internet. Then in January, we will be looking at the Arduino. Anyone with experience with this want to present?
Hope to see you there!
-twb
