At the last //Build conference they spoke about Windows on a Intel mainboard. Intel developed a chip which was capable of running Microsoft Windows. The board is a Intel Galileo. In fact it is a Arduino board so the available Arduino components (of which a lot is available) can be used with it.
The Arduino development environment is shown below. The code is C / C++. The example will make the onboard led blink.
I wanted Windows on it of course. Therefore I had to perform a firmware update. The Arduino development environment is fairly simple. It is copy/paste of a directory with everything in it. It also contains the Firmware update.
To get Windows for the Galileo board, you need Microsoft Connect access to the Windows Embedded Pre-release program. Via these pages on GitHub they tell you the steps to install.
Below the process of installing on the SD card.
When ready you need to place the card on the Galileo board. The Galileo watcher app will show him (if it is connected via USB/Ethernet).
There is a little Webserver with this Windows too.
You can create a network share and it will show you the files.
The directory of the web server. I have changes some text here.
The directory where the deployments will be done.
Ok, now we have Windows on it. Lets build something. For .NET Gadgeteer was it simple. With this it will be a little different. There is a Visual Studio 2013 project template for C++.
For this demo I did not use the onboard led, but I added a led to the board. Via code I will make it blink.
Does not look difficult. And if you run and debug it, it will show in je Visual Studio.
And the led will blink. The red led on the second picture is brighter.
But lets take it a step further. I also bought a 16×2 display for showing texts.
Connecting it is less elegant than with the .NET Gadgeteer platform. You need a breadboard and lots of cables to make connections.
But the result of the code is visible. On the screen i++ iterates.
Cool he. I need to experiment more with it. There is a lot of things possible. Although I have to refresh my C++.