Development with the Windows Sensor and Location Platform Forum

Accessing SMBus Device ( Battery Fuel Gage ) from System side

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:56:41 Z

Hi,
I need to access the fuel gage on my laptop battery for an application. Normally I would communicate to the fuel gage using an external SMBus driver which directly connects to the fuel gage through SMBus .
However for this application, the fuel gage is alreay installed in the laptop, and I do not have direct access to the fuel gage. I will have to go through the System side.
I have been reading articles in msdn which have pointed me towards KMDF and making C/C++ programs to access the SMBus through windows in the Kernel Mode. My end solution will be to send some commands to a particular address on SMBus.
I have presently installed DDK on my computer and there is some information on how to access SMBus. However there are no samples.
Can anyone answer following questions :
(i) Am I going down the right path in accessing the SMBus(& thus notebook fuel gage) through KMDF & writing a C/C++ code for the same
(ii) Are there any code samples that I could use as a starting point ?

Thanks in advance for your help !

Regards,
Sambit

location api and acer pdc09 netbook

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:51:51 Z

hey i received one of those acer netbooks at pdc. if i wanted to work with the location api, can i do this out of the box with this netbook ( it doesnt come with GPS ).
sorry for being a newb but ... can the api work with wifi triangulation and ip resolver?
the netbook doesnt come with expansion card slot
so would it be a good idea to get a usb ( or whatever other connnection one? )

basically i dont want to spend money if i dont have to.
i suppose i could work with the api without a gps add on to my netbook

but would that be accurate?
does the api use all sources as input?
thanks

how can i get windows 7 32-bit product key?

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 08:55:52 Z

i want windows 7 32-bit product key ..
plz help mi..:((((

Any tips on troubleshooting driver installation on Win 7?

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:53:09 Z

I'm using the freescale jm badge board on x64 win 7 rtm, but the drivers don't seem to load successfully (install just stops), and the device never shows up in the sensors listing in control panel.

Freescale JMBADGE2008-B installation problems

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:09:20 Z

Just got my board in the mail and I'm having BIG trouble with it. I DO see it show up as an HID device in device manager, however, I can't get it to show up in the Location & Other Sensors control panel. I followed the troubleshooting instructions in "Sensor Development Kit Driver & Firmware.rtf". When I press E8 twice, instead of activiting the sensors, it seems to royally screw up my (bluetooth) keyboard and mouse. I have to unplug it or risk whatever it might click on or type in. I've tried unplugging the bluetooth for the mouse and keyboard, but it does the same thing. I've tried updating the firmware - seems to complete OK, but no improvement. Running SensorKitDriverInstaller.exe doesn't seem to do anything - no UI ever comes up. I'm on 64bit Win 7 Ultimate. Tried everything I can think of from re-booting to re-flashing, to ...

One more tidbit. When I attempt to "Update Driver" on the HID device and manually try to select a driver, it offers me x86 and amd64, neither of which my Intel Core2 Quad machine seems to like. Does this just flat out not work on Intel 64bit?

Help!

IE8 support for the Location&Sensor API

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:04:34 Z

I've just tried installing WindowsNT's NMEA0183 driver. Although I haven't done much testing, it looks to be working fine with my GlobalSat BU-353 (Win7 x86 laptop).

Has Microsoft hinted when / if support for the Location & Sensor API will be added to Internet Explorer?

The W3C have a Geolocation API which was recently added to Firefox (I wrote an article about it at: http://www.geowebguru.com/articles/172-the-w3c-browser-geolocation-api ). The Firefox version gets the user's location from a Google web service and is based on IP address.

It would appear that the Location&Sensor API would be a natural source of data to implement this API in Internet Explorer...

Probably a long shot to get it working in time, but demonstrating this working with a GPS receiver vs. Firefox's IP-based system would look good at a Windows 7 party!

Richard

Richard Marsden http://www.geowebguru.com http://www.mapping-tools.com

Question on signing

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:46:06 Z

Hi,

I was signing my sensor driver (UMDF) with a Verisign Class 3 Code Signing Cert in order to get rid of the "This driver is unsigned..." warning on install. Instead I've now a question box from Windows Security, asking me, whether I want to install the driver. For me this means, I have successfully expelled the Devil with the Beelzebub... for just $500 per year :) Even more worse: In the properties dialog the driver is still marked as NOT digitally signed...

Two questions on this:

1) Is it possible to achieve a "silent" install with devcon, getting rid of any security warning/message?

2) What are the required steps to get a digitally signed driver, which installs w/o complains and is treated as signed?

Kind regards

neil

Question on deployment

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:26:06 Z

Hi,

I've no rolled my sensor driver and sucessfully installed it using devcon. I fear, I'm not allowed to distribute devcon to a client machine in order to use it there for installation/deinstallation (?). For this I wanted to use DIFxAPI for installing, but this doesn't work either.

DIFxCmd.exe /i Test.inf

DIFxAPI Sample Program

INFO: Option "/i"

INFO: Input file "C:\SensorsDriver\Test.inf"

INFO: Flags 0x0 (0)

TEST: installing driver package.

LOG Event: 1, ENTER: DriverPackageInstallW

LOG Event: 1, Installing INF file 'C:\SensorsDriver\Test.inf' (Plug and Play).

LOG Event: 1, Looking for Model Section [NTx86]...

LOG Event: 1, No matching devices found in INF "G:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\

FileRepository\Test.inf_x86_neutral_af4d3025189618dc\Test.

inf" on the Machine.

LOG Event: 1, No drivers installed. No devices found that match driver(s) contai

ned in 'G:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\Test.inf_x86_n

eutral_af4d3025189618dc\Test.inf'.

LOG Event: 1, RETURN: DriverPackageInstallW (0xE000020B)

INFO: There aren't any live devnodes with the DeviceId contained in the INF.

It all ends up in E00000020B... Is it generally possible to use this API for driver installation?

Regards

neil

GPS Generic NMEA COM Port (Bluetooth, USB etc) Sensor Driver

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 11:41:16 Z

I 've created the UMDF driver to expose a sensor interface for any NMEA-compatible GPS connected at a serial port (via bluetooth, usb etc). It works fine on my system, currently supporting GGA/RMC/GSA/GSV to return X,Y,Z,Precision Information,Satellite Information, Speed and Bearing.

Perhaps you 'd want to give it a try and tell me what to fix. The driver is available for both x64 and x86. Hopefully you will help me to finalize this and provide a full solution to all Windows 7 Sensor and Location-aware applications.

To validate com port settings , you might need before installing the driver to connect to the GPS device directly (by using e.g. Turbo GPS or Hyperterminal) and verify that your settings work.

The ISensor ID is {800EE0CB-71EC-40f0-991C-7E76BFABD1AF}, pass this to ISensorManager::GetSensorByID() to get the sensor.

Link.

Best Regards.

Changelog:

Driver works with Location API.
Driver reports Satellite data.
Driver allows selection of the COM port baud speed.
Turbo GPS Updated to support Sensor API and indirectly, the driver.
Driver returns NMEA and Fix Type
Driver supports x86
Driver supports GGA and RMC

Michael

What APIs are accessible from sensor driver?

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:33:08 Z

Hi group,

is it possible to access the Native WLAN API from a sensor driver (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms705969(VS.85).aspx)? Is furthermore possible to access the WinINet API as well (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa385483(VS.85).aspx)?

If not, could someone please point me to alternative APIs?

TIA

neil

Restoring question to enable/disable a sensor on RequestPermissions

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:49:52 Z

Normally Windows present a dialog box to the user, asking him to allow a new sensor. However i accidentally pressed 'no' once, and now, when i reinstall a sensor, i have to manually go to the control panel and enable it.

Is there a (non programming) way to restore the default behaviour ? Registry key or something.

Thanks.

Michael

HID input from a sensor driver?

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:11:55 Z

Hi again.

I am trying to create a sensor driver for a device that is normally accessible through HID. However it seems that HidD* functions are not available for UMDF, for example HidD_GetHidGuid , HidD_GetPreparsedData are not available in the hid.lib. It seems that I can't also use raw input with WM_INPUT .

Do I have any other option ?

Michael

More categories?

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:27:51 Z

Hello again.

Am I limited to using one of the existing categories for a sensor ? If no, then how do I enumerate all available categories ? GetSensorsByCategory requires that you know the category CLSID.

Best Regards.

Michael

ILocation trouble

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:16:30 Z

I am trying to use ILocation to get the location lon/lat while a GPS sensor is attached and there are two problems.

1. No notification method (my ILocationEvents) is called

2. When I manually call ILocation::GetReport() , I get a HRESULT error "pipe is closing"

What's wrong ?

Michael

Streets & Trips GPS Sensors

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:25:43 Z

During the talk at PDC it was mentioned that there aren't any GPS adapters supporting the Sensor platform. How about providing support for one that many of us (developers) have anyways - the one that ships with Streets & Trips? That would be absolutely great.

Chris
http://chrison.net/

Using .NET Micro Frmework

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:26:12 Z

Isn't it much easier (cheaper) to use .NET Micro Framework to create sensors? I am assuming you can create a sensor in couple hours and few lines of code.

.NET Micro Framework supports custom USB device.

We are a Microsoft partner on .NET Micro Famewokr. We would love to work with anyone willing to use .NET Micro Framework with this new sensor technology.

Our USBizi chipset that runs NETMF is a perfect fit for such device.

GHI Team

www.ghielectronics.com

Different name in Device Manager and Control Panel

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:11:48 Z

I am looking to have one name for my location sensor that is displayed in the device manager and a different name that is displayed in the Location and Other Sensors Control Panel.

Currently the device description from my INF file is used in both locations. I have tried setting several of the sensor properies (ie. SENSOR_PROPERTY_FRIENDLY_NAME , SENSOR_PROPERTY_DESCRIPTION, etc.) but that is not making a difference. Perhaps it would be helpful to learn which API call is used to determine which name to display in the Control Panel.

Thanks!

jessica

SMBus Client/Sensor Class Driver

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:59:53 Z

Hello all,

I've been creating custom i2c Linux drivers for our accelerometers and now I'm struggling to make the transition to Windows driver development. I've read a lot of documentation on Sensor and Location drivers, SMBus client drivers, and the Windows DDK, but I just don't see how everything is supposed to come together. I'm using the most current release candidate of Windows 7, and I recently received a development kit along with Windows Embedded 2011 Standard pre-release and I should be able to physically add the accelerometer to the hardware platform. I just have a few newbie questions for you more experienced Windows developers if I may:

- I've looked at the code for the sample sensor drivers, but they don't seem to include much about the physical communication method. Is there an example I can look at which uses SMBus in particular to communicate with the sensor device?

- Is there a way to use Visual Studio or another IDE to make sense of all the various pieces of driver code? (The sample source is rather disjointed; I'm used to seeing one source file and one header file for a driver...)

- Browsing the MSDN literature seems to be a great way to pick up information, but at times it seems like too much. Is there a recommended starter guide in publication that might help me get started with writing this SMBus Client/Sensor Class Driver?

Any information would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you,
Chris H.
Kionix, Inc.

List of supported sensor boards

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:15:43 Z

It could be very useful to construct a list with Windows 7 compatible sensor boards.

The only one I have found till now is the following. If you have spotted any other it would be great if you post it here.

JMBADGE2008-B
u-blox GPS chips

Microsoft Student Partner, Microsoft Hellas

To retrieve NMEA Sentences from NMEA COM PORT And Get the Latitude and Longitude

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:30:18 Z

Hello All!!!!!!!

According to QCWWAN Connection Manager API for Gobi 2000, we have implemented Position Determination Service(PDS) functions and call back functions.
To find out the GPS location data, Application will detect NMEA COM Port and then retrieve NMEA Senstences through NMEA COM Port.
Then Application parses the NMEA Strings into meaningful data ie the current latitude and longitude of the GPS hardware.

We need one sample application how they are retrieving NMEA sentences through NMEA COM port.

Thanking You all in Advance

Best
arjun.tgm

Any supported GPS units yet?

Fri, 22 May 2009 02:43:15 Z

Are there any GPS units that work with the sensor and location platform? If not yet, do you know if anyone has announced plans for support on or before release of Windows 7?

As an aside, it would be great if Microsoft provided a driver for the Microsoft GPS sensor that ships with Streets and Trips.

Reset Location Setting in Windows 7

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 05:34:26 Z

Hi,

I have enabled location sensor from my Windows 7 application using RequestPermissions API. Windows opened up the location control panel asking the user permission to enable sensor.

And once enabled, is there a way to reset the permissions.

barani.

Sensor driver in .NET.

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 11:15:42 Z

Hi,
Looking at the 'TimeSensor' C++ sample, which comes with the Windows7 DDK, I was wondering if it would be possible to write a logical software based sensor driver in .NET since the SensorExtensionClass and all other datamodels to interact are COM based.
I have been looking for a dll or tlb in order to try this but I can't find it in the DDK.
Love to hear your feedback and suggestions.

Regards.

Yves

How do i get back the barcode vlaue from the SENSOR_TYPE_BARCODE_SCANNER ?

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:27:15 Z

In the SENSOR_CATEGORY_SCANNER we have two type of sensors
SENSOR_TYPE_BARCODE_SCANNER
SENSOR_TYPE_RFID_SCANNER

but i only see one data field name PropertyKey
SENSOR_DATA_TYPE_RFID_TAG_40_BIT 40-bit radio frequency ID tag value. That provides me with the value that is read by the RFID device. But i do not see any data field or propertykey that can provide me the barcode value that is read by the sensor type barcode

USB interface

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:22:57 Z

I have a device connecting to my computer through USB. The heart of the device is a PIC chip, and it sensors temperature from a oven and sends the value back to PC. I can display the temperature data on the hyperterminal of my computer, but can't catch it. Is there anyway I can build a VB project to record the temerature data? Thank you for your reading.

Basic WiFI Triangulation support

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:32:48 Z

I would like to use the Location platform with basic wifi trianulation provider. (i.e. see what wifi endpoints are visiable (MAC addreses) - get their relative strength and location from a service to compute an approximate location) Even being able to identify the list of wifi endpoints would get me started (Then being able to identify if I was at work or at home). Is thier such a thing? Would I need to write the appropriate driver if I want to experiment?

light sensor of Freescale JM Badge board

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 11:55:43 Z

every sample (even the sensordevkitdiagnosticapp) shows the light sensor with 2 lux. No change no nothing. When i plug in the board in my windows 7 tablet, backlight goes down to minimum.
Is my board sensor broken?

How sensor application can choose between different types supported for a same category?

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 06:09:15 Z

Hi All,

I have some questions for the GPS application.

We have a GPS device (SENSOR_CATEGORY_LOCATION).

The device supports stand alone(SENSOR_TYPE_LOCATION_GPS) as well as AGPS(SENSOR_TYPE_LOCATION_LOOKUP).

My question is how the Apllication can set which type to be used(GPS or LOOKUP) for getting the location.

If Application sets LOOKUP method to get the location parameters, we require many settings to be done (such as establishing a data connection, setting URL of the carrier). Who (Application or Driver) will be responsible for these settings?

I am developing a sensor driver for our device, I am not sure whether i can post sensor driver development related queries on this forum. Please suggest.

UMDF Driver for Ambient Light Sensor

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:47:16 Z

I want to develop and UMDF driver for an ambient light sensor device that exposes a I2C (SMBus) interface. I understand that the SMBus interface is only exposed to kernel mode drivers. How do I access this interface from a UMDF driver ?

Thanks in advance.

AccessViolationException in PropVariant.cs (Sensor Diagnostic Tool)

Thu, 21 May 2009 18:31:21 Z

When I build and run in debug mode the SensorDiagnostic Tool I get a AccessViolationException in PropVariant.cs on line 260.

        private unsafe T[] GetVectorData<T>() where T : struct
        {
            if (uiVal == 0 || this.vectorPtr == IntPtr.Zero)
                return new T[0];

            T[] data = new T[uiVal];
            uint tSize = (uint) Marshal.SizeOf(typeof(T));

            GCHandle pinningGCH = GCHandle.Alloc(data, GCHandleType.Pinned);
            try
            {
                IntPtr dst = pinningGCH.AddrOfPinnedObject();
                RtlMoveMemory(dst, this.vectorPtr, uiVal * tSize);       <= Error occurs here
            }
            finally
            {
                pinningGCH.Free();
            }

            return data;
        }

=============================================================================
Here are the autos:

+  dst 39919664 System.IntPtr
+  pinningGCH {System.Runtime.InteropServices.GCHandle} System.Runtime.InteropServices.GCHandle
  tSize 1 uint
+  this {Windows7.Sensors.Internal.PROPVARIANT} Windows7.Sensors.Internal.PROPVARIANT
+  this.vectorPtr 2000930086731120640 System.IntPtr
  uiVal 40 ushort
===============================================================================
Additional information: This only occurs for the ambient light sensor. I have the Windows 7 sensor development kit and if I modify the code to exclude this sensor everything runs juist fine. I am running VS 2008 on Windows 7 with all service packs.

Sample Location-Aware WPF Application

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 19:03:48 Z

Hi there, played with Windows Location Platform and decided to showcase how easy it is to use Location APIs in your WPF application.
Thanks to excellent Mike Taulty's WPF Virtual Earth control, I was able to develop this in few hours.

Look for results here: http://blogs.msdn.com/semantics/archive/2008/11/04/sample-location-aware-wpf-application.aspx

Have questions? Ask through my blog "About" page or here.

MSDN Online Program Manager, Server & Tools Online Team, Microsoft Corporation

What conceptually is a sensor?

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:34:03 Z

I realise that the sensor and location platform team did not start with a blank slate so perhaps there is a lot of legacy baggage in Windows 7. For example the mouse predates Windows itself.

Given that a lot of this older hardware is already supported in Windows through other APIs, and thus may never be part of the sensor and location platform, what is the criteria used when considering a new piece of hardware to determine if it is a sensor or something else?

To help you understand the reason for my question, perhaps it is helpful to share the basis for my confusion. A mouse is a "human interface device" in Windows and thus not a sensor. AN XBox controller is supported in Windows, but is not a sensor. An accelerometer that you hold in your hands and use to play an XBox game is a sensor. If an XBox controller is not a sensor then why is the accelerometer not a human interface device?

Is it simply a matter of historical accident that some of these things are classified as human interface devices rather than sensors?

Further there are perhaps unexpected consiquences to what is and what is not a sensor. Ambient light is handled by the sensor and location APIs while the laptop battery status is not. If one is trying to do "green" software design with power efficent (thus power aware) applications, one does not want to be adjusting the screen display to consume more power (i.e. bright sunlight mode) at a time when the battery is low on power.

SensorKitDriverInstaller.exe missing

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 08:45:59 Z

I was an attendee at PDC2008. I got the Windows 7 Sensor Development Kit but the Sensor Development Kit DVD was missing. Is it possible to get the drivers (SensorKitDriverInstaller.exe) or the content of the DVD?

Tanks in advance

Marcello

Developer

Can't add a reference to Windows7.SensorAndLocation.dll from Silverlight project

Wed, 20 May 2009 17:37:37 Z

In Visual Studio 2008 when I attempt to add a reference to Windows7.SensorAndLocation.dll from my Silverlight project I get a popup that states:

"You can't add a reference to Windows7.SensorAndLocation.dll as it was not built against the Silverlight runtime. Silverlight projects will only work with Silverlight assemblies."

I must be doing something wrong, any ideas?

Laptop Battery

Fri, 15 May 2009 20:26:07 Z

Will the state of charge for the laptop battery be a standard sensor in Windows 7?

Windows 7 RC 32-bit MD5?

Tue, 05 May 2009 16:51:04 Z

Today I have downloaded the win7 RC 32bit edition ,But did not know that its MD5 verification code is how many ,Hoped that person of good intention may provide to me! think you very mach!!!

Access to Sensor and Location .NET Interop Library from Silverlight?

Fri, 15 May 2009 20:35:31 Z

Will it be possible for a Silverlight application running on a client to access the ambient light sensor data using the .net interop library?

More generally, sincle Silverlight applications do not run with full trust, what access rights are required for which sensors?

Sensor Dev Kit

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 05:07:05 Z

How do I get the Sensor Dev Kit?

--plg

--plg

Windows XP support

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 09:25:47 Z

Hello,

Is there any way to get the Sensor Development Kit (Freescale JM Badge Board Rev D) to also work on Windows XP ?

Thanks.

Windows Sensor and Location Platform

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 09:55:00 Z

Sir,

1.
If the BIOS supported the ACPI 3.0b and implement the interface of ambient light sensor in it, the Windows 7's in box driver (ACPI ALS driver) would be loaded and the Windows 7 would have adaptive brightness control ability.

Is it right ?

2.
If I use a usb interface ambient light sensor(like the Windows 7 Sensor Development Kit - JM Badge Board), and have the UMDF sensor driver for it.

Does the Windows 7 would have adaptive brightness control ability as Question 1?

=======================================================================
I have the JM adge Board and it work on the MSDN Reader AP.
But it just can work on it.
How to let it work on all the system? (ex, LCD Monitor brightness Adaptive Control ...) ?

Best Regards,
Anson