Month: January 2017

Have you ever wondered “How did that dev do that”?  Listen to Patrick Abadi, founder of Panoramic Software, talk about his experiences developing Windows apps using Xamarin and .Net technologies.  He explains how Xamarin helped them reuse 75% of their code as they bring their apps to other platforms.

Sign up to be a Windows Insider here and learn more about Panoramic software at http://www.panoramicsoft.com. 

Continue reading One Dev Story: Patrick Abadi – A Windows Insider→

In this episode, we will add the finishing touches to the point and click style movement. We will use NavMesh Obstacles to define areas that our character should not walk through, such as the well. We’ll also show the player where they clicked by anima… Continue reading Unity Navigation – Part 2 | .GAME→

Halo Wars 2, Xbox, and 343 Industries have brought the intensity of battle to gamers through a dramatic real-world combat experience inspired by the Halo universe. Unaware of the test ahead, fans were led into a Halo-themed military command center where a conventional demonstration quickly turned into an onslaught of action and chaos, as the frenetic nature of battle was captured with UNSC unit commanders requesting orders. The new recruits quickly realized that they were in the hot seat, tasked with saving their own lives and their units, with no other tools other than their quick strategic thinking. Some panicked… Continue reading Gamers Thrown into Real-World Battle for Halo Wars 2→

All Units, Local Units! Get ready to experience a brand new way to play RTS because the Halo Wars 2 Blitz Multiplayer Beta officially launches today on Xbox One and Windows 10 PC! The Blitz multiplayer beta is open to anyone on Windows 10 PC and for Xbox Live Gold members on Xbox One, and runs from today until Jan. 30. Blitz offers a unique twist on Halo Wars 2 gameplay by replacing the traditional real-time strategy (RTS) aspects of resource collection, base building and tech tree planning with a streamlined way to build your armies and jump straight into… Continue reading Play the Halo Wars 2 Blitz Multiplayer Beta on Xbox One and Windows 10 PC Today→

At last, video game’s unlikeliest hero has climbed onto Xbox One: I Am Bread is here! In our game, players control a lovable slice of bread with the objective of becoming the greatest version of itself — toast — all the while taking care to avoid any hazards on its way to a suitable heat source. With its intentionally tough to master controls (who thought moving bread was easy?), only the most determined players will be able to guide their gluten through various levels in and around an unsuspecting man’s home, while slowly robbing him of his sanity. I Am… Continue reading I Am Bread Slices Its Way Onto Xbox One Today→

In this episode Haishi Bai and Ryan Volum are joined by Josh Caplan, Senior Program Manager on the Azure Analysis Services team. Analysis Services has typically shipped with SQL Server on premises, but now it has been implemented as a fu… Continue reading Episode 221: Azure Analysis Services with Josh Caplan | Microsoft Azure Cloud Cover Show→

The new year is in full swing, and so was Microsoft this week, with transformative work in artificial intelligence, retail, music, virtual reality and social good. Microsoft advanced its artificial intelligence efforts with plans to acquire Montreal-based Maluuba, one of the world’s most impressive, deep-learning research labs for natural language understanding. Microsoft announced it will double the size of the lab in the next two years and give $6 million … Read more »

The post Advancing artificial intelligence, transforming retail and creating a musical VR experience from the desert: Weekend Reading — Jan. 20 appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.

Continue reading Advancing artificial intelligence, transforming retail and creating a musical VR experience from the desert: Weekend Reading — Jan. 20→

Luis Valencia, Microsoft MVP, has written up a great IoT project that seems to be perfect right now (Man, it’s cold! 😉

First we have a short interview of him at the recent MVP Summit;

Luis Valencia – IoT, sensors, and Azure

Now onto the full project…

Real Time Temperature WebApp with Raspberry, Azure IoT Hub and SignalR

“The IoT is exploding  – and everybody is talking about it; Twitter feeds are buzzing, and blog posts are flooded with information. However, for many of us mere mortals, it looks like rocket science.

In this post, I will try to make it easy for you to understand the basic concepts and technology behind the scenes. I will also build a fully functional sample web app, where you can see the end result and how all the pieces are connected.

So, what is the IoT? You will probably find different explanations, but for me, the best explanation is:

The IoT comprises of things or devices that are connected to a network; they produce or receive data, and then perform actions based on it.

Let’s take a Temperature Sensor as a simple example. In this scenario, this particular sensor sends data to a website in real-time. It is connected to a refrigerator in a drugstore, which by law needs to have  controlled temperature. Rather than employing a person to go to the refrigerator every 30 minutes to take note of the current temperature, write it down manually on a piece of paper, and then save the evidence that the temperature has been written down for 24 hours, the sensor does it all automatically.

The IoT enables new business scenarios, new products, new services, and–just like the one I am going to show–there are hundreds out there already in production. And it’s really not rocket science.

What will you need to complete this?

The first thing to have is the THING, or a device. In my case I have Raspberry PI 3; this is a $39.99 dollar computer to which we can connect devices and then create applications that interact with those devices or sensors.  Here I also have BPM180 Sensor, which you can find on Amazon for $9 or $10.  This sensor measures temperature in real time. Later you will learn how to show it in real-time in a web application.

The Raspberry PI 3 comes by default with Raspbian installed. This is a Linux based OS based on Debian, however you can install Windows IoT Core. This is a minimum footprint version of the Operating System. What is amazing about this OS is that you can create apps with the tools you already know and love — yes, Universal Windows Platform Apps will run on IoT Core, as well as Windows 8 or Windows 10, with the same programming language you already know, C#.

There are APIs out there to create apps in Javascript or other languages, but for simplicity I will just show the C# code.

Moving Parts of Our Solution

The PI APP…

IoT Hub …

Azure Web Job …

SQL Server …

Web App …

…

And the end result is a dashboard which shows the temperature in real time, like this screenshot demonstrates:

…” [Click through to read it all]

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Continue reading How Cold is it, Right Now?→