MSDN Magazine - August 2008 - (Page 131)

Mike CAlligARo GoinG Places What Can A Robot Teach You? What can a robot teach you? If you’re a fan of the best show on television, you’re probably thinking, “Well, it could probably teach me how to walk, talk, and beat the frak out of my opponents.” If, however, you’re also a fan of the best mobile operating system on the planet, you might be thinking, “Well, it could probably teach me how to programmatically take pictures, use SMS as a data channel, send data over Bluetooth or WiFi, and be notified at various points in a playing song.” I can’t help you with beating the frak out of your opponents. But if you’re interested in the other stuff, read on. But, easy as that may be, this is a column about mobile development, not robotics. So today’s column isn’t really going to be about building a WiMo. Instead I’ll explore some of the things that WiMo’s code base does and discuss how you can apply those same things to your mobile apps. If, along the way, you’re inspired to do something really off the wall with your phone, all the better. First things first. WiMo is basically a simple set of motors and sensors whose main purpose is to carry around a Windows Mobile device that acts as its brain. All of the real work is done by the phone, and all of the code that does this work is available for free on WiMo’s Web site, I, WiMo wimobot.com. If you’re interested in building a Although I’ve been a software developer at Figure 1 Artist’s Rendering of WiMo WiMo, you’ll want to follow the Building WiMo Microsoft for more than 14 years, I started life link to wimobot.com/Building.aspx. If you’re just inas a hardware design engineer. I graduated with a degree in Elec- terested in the source code, though, go to wimobot.com/SourceCode.aspx. trical Engineering and spent my career’s formative years designing We’re going to be spending a lot of time talking about that source mainframes. This was back in the days when we had to lay out the code, so you might as well get it now. logic gates by hand—none of that fancy Verilog stuff those young Go ahead. I’ll wait. whippersnappers use today. (We also walked miles to work in the smog. Uphill. Both ways. And we liked it.) This is something of a contrast to my friend and coworker, Brian Cross. Brian’s a software guy to the core, always has been and always will be. He’s been at Microsoft his whole career and speaks C# almost as well as English. (It was Brian—and Charles Petzold, of course—who taught me the wonders of managed code.) So it’s somewhat ironic that, between the two of us, Brian is the guy who built a robot. You may have heard of WiMo, Brian’s Windows Mobile®-based What’s that? Yes, click the disclaimer that says you won’t sue Brian robot, an illustration of which is shown in Figure 1. WiMo has if you use his technology to build a machine that eventually turns gained some notoriety for being a fully programmable robot that on its creator. That’ll never happen. Trust us. you don’t need to be an Electrical Engineer to build. Brian, in clasAfter you’ve unpacked the code, open the file WiMo.sln in Visic Microsoft style, sees the whole thing as a software problem. In sual Studio®. Don’t mind the XML document errors; Part of WiMo’s its simplest form, you can build a functional WiMo out of nothing charm is that it’s being done by Brian the “We can do anything” demore than a Windows Mobile phone and some Legos—no solder- veloper, not Brian the “We can’t even think about releasing someing iron required. thing without a proper test plan” corporate suit. WiMo.sln has a number of projects, but you should start at Form1.cs in the WiMo project. In that file, you’ll see the usage of many of the more interSend your questions and comments to goplaces@microsoft.com. esting classes defined in the solution. You can build a WiMo out of a Windows Mobile phone and some legos. August 2008 131 http://wimobot.com http://wimobot.com/Building.aspx http://wimobot.com/SourceCode.aspx

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of MSDN Magazine - August 2008

MSDN Magazine - August 2008 Toolbox CLR Inside Out Basic Instincts Cutting Edge Patterns in Practice Data 2.0 - Expose And Consume Data In A Web Services World Biztalk EDI - Build A Robust EDI Solution With BizTalk Server Silverlight - Create Animations With XAML And Expression Blend Write On! - Create Web Apps You Can Draw On With Silverlight 2 Wicked Code - Craft Custom Controls For Silverlight 2 Team System Foundations Windows With C++ Concurrent Affairs Going Places { End Bracket }

MSDN Magazine - August 2008

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