Up to this point, for my embedded SPARK entry, I have been playing with the embedded sensors, actuators and micro-controllers for the Control Stations and RC Cars.
Time to get serious about the core code for the Control System (which, incidentally, is what I will largely be assessed on).
Before I can start developing in anger, I will need an IDE and tool chain to build the Windows CE OS for the device that I won. Being a novice with CE, I’m not too proud to RTFM. The manual provided with the hardware from the competition is very comprehensive and well written. A few pages in, I am confronted with the following:
Recommended Software Installation Sequence.
It’s important to install the software in their proper sequences. Here is the recommended software installation sequence, in numeric order.
- Visual Studio 2005
- Visual Studio 2005 SP1
- Visual Studio 2005 SP1 update for Vista
- Windows Embedded CE 6.0 <– this wasn’t a “next, next…” install, there was a custom step to select the x86 BSP for my device (I missed that the first time and had to return to here and reinstall everything down the line!
)
- Windows Embedded CE 6.0 SP1
- Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R2
- Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 <– this wasn’t included in the SPARK your Imagination kit supplied by MS. No biggie, except that I live in the sticks and get 75kB/sec download speed…
- Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 Update Rollup <– this was omitted from the instructions that came with my embedded device
- ICOP_VDX6326_60B_BSP.msi
- VDX6326_WINCE600_SDK.msi
- CoreCon_v200_x86_WinCE600.msi
- AutoLaunch_v200_x86_WinCE600.msi
- RegFlushApp_v100_x86_WinCE600.msi
Long story short: 1.5 days later, I have the OS building successfully.I do have 12 warning(s). But hey, if they were serious they’d make them error(s).
Thankfully, now that this is sorted, it is not something that I will likely have to go through again in a hurry. I am thinking about building a virtual instance of a Win 7 machine solely for developing in CE so that I don’t have to have Visual Studio 2005 living along side VS 2008+.
Tags: embeddedSPARK, Windows CE