Had a load of fun getting my Raspberry PI 2 set up with Windows IoT core and the whole development environment that's needed for it.

1. Windows 10 and Visual Studio:

Can't develop for Windows IoT core without Windows 10.  So had to set up Windows 10 on Mid 2011 Mac. The problem was my Mac already had Debian Linux running on a separate partition. I used the wonderful rEFInd boot manager from Rod Smith earlier to do the partitioning and it came in handy to add the third partition for windows 10. Had some quirky troubles with the Apple Wireless mouse and keyboard but i have a wired keyboard/mouse connected to the Mac just in case. [So now my mac has two keyboards and two mouse.. :)  One day i need to get around to fixing the problem permanently.]

After getting Windows 10 on the Mac installing VS 2015  was a breeze.

2. Windows IoT Core on Raspberry Pi:

Followed the official instructions to create a SD card with Windows IoT core, transferred the SD card to Raspberry PI 2 and booted it up. Everything good so far. Then disaster struck when i tried to set up the WiFi connection.

My Logitech wired keyboard was not recognized properly by Windows IoT Core. Well, it recognized the keyboard but for some reason was skipping keys, treating single key press as long key press and all sorts of weird things. Tried using a powered USB hub but Iot Core doesn't recognize devices connected to the powered USB hub. 

Loaded Raspbian in another SD Card and verified that there is no problem with the USB port or my Keyboard. Raspbian worked like charm with my keyboard and mouse.

I didn't want to get another keyboard. My WiFi router is far away from my workspace and there is no wired connection. I need a wired connection near my workspace. So what to do?

Time for another long postponed project. Update my old Linksys router with DD-WRT and turn it in to a repeater. The folks at DD-WRT are wizards. Just had to follow the New Wiki installation instructions at DD-WRT for my model of Linksys router (WRT54G2) and the Repeater Bridge set up instructions.    

After this i was able to connect my Pi to my "new" repeater with a LAN cable and my IoT Dashboard running on Windows 10 was able to see the Pi. Now i can manage the PI over the network and don't need the keyboard connected to the PI. (Well.. I would need it if i have to run something that need keyboard input on the PI..Well.. that's for another day. Just have to design applications that don't need keyboard input for now..)

3. Testing..
So wrote up a quick Windows UWA application, loaded it on the PI and i was good to go. 

So far its mixed feelings. Realize that the Windows IoT core device support is not mature. But i like the idea about being able to hack the Pi with code written in C# and Visual Studio. 

​Will explore more..

In an earlier post I enabled an Arduino Yun to be controlled by Windows Remote Arduino over WiFi. This project is a further extension of it in exploring what is possible with Windows Remote Arduino. This time i connected a LED strip (TM1803 based three wire LED strip from Radioshack) to my Yun and controlled its color through an Universal Windows App that uses Windows Remote Arduino. Here is the lamp in action. 

(I realize that there is a lag in the video between the phone overlay and the lamp. Something wrong with my video encoder. Couldn't figure it out. Job for another day..)

 Key Components

Aside from Yun and Windows Remote Arduino, the key components are:
1. LED Strip : Most of the LED strips have dedicated IC chips on them to control a fixed set of LEDs and communicate the data downstream to next IC chip on the strip.  I used a Radioshack LED strip that uses TM1803. This is a small 1 meter strip with 10 chips controlling 30 LEDs.
2. Power Source: Most of the LED's strips would need a separate power source. Mine required a 12v power supply. Since the Yun is only a 5V device, the power source and Yun had to have a common ground. Even thought there are ways to use the same 12v power supply to drive both the LED and Yun, i chose to run them with separate power source and common ground.
3. FastLed Library:
This is an excellent Arduino library developed and maintained by Daniel Garcia and Mark Kriegsman. There is no other library that supports such a vast array of LED strips as this.

Wiring

Simple wiring steps:
1. 12V power adapter +V to RGB Led Strp +Vcc
2. 12v Power Adapter GND to Arduino Yun Gnd pin.
3. RGB Led Strip GND to Arduino Yun Gnd pin
4.RGB Led String Data Pin to Arduino Digital 3 ( ~ pwm)

Arduino can be powered with a battery or wall wart independent of the LED strip power. Here is my wired up Yun before installing it in the lamp.

Software

The LED strips will be controlled by an Arduino Sketch using the FastLED library. The sketch will receive the color information from the Windows Universal App over WiFi through the Windows Remote Arduino's Firmata interface.

Modified Firmata

​Instead of using the StandardFirmataYun as mentioned in the earlier project, i am using a stripped down version of the firmata sketch as i am interested only in handling the string message call back. The call back will accept a string with the format of "R,G,B" and parse it to provide the color information to the FastLed library.

Univeral Windows App

1. Create a new Universal Windows App in Visual studio
2. Prepare the UI. XAML can be found in GitHub repository.
3. The universal app establishes a Network Serial connection to the Yun's Linux Serial port. (Note: This works only if the Yun was prepared as per the instructions in the earlier project.). There is a slight variation in the initialization of the Windows Remote Arduino in this code as the "sendString" function is available only on the UwpFirmata class. So an instance of UwpFirmata should be initialized first and passed to the constructor of RemoteDevice. Then a network serial connection should be prepared and passed as parameter to firmata.begin.. Then the network serial begin() should be called to open up connection to Arduino. The WRA initialization code is listed below: ​

4. The app displays an UI element with a color gradient. The app uses the WriteableBitmapEx NuGet package to add some extension methods that makes it easier to pick the color at the screen location where the user touches. Initialize the writeableBitmap so that it can be reused. Code:

5. On Click/Touch event, picks the color at the touched point and sends it to Arduino Yun by using the firmata.sendString method. Making a "flush()" call after every send to ensure that the string is processed cleanly. I had issues without calling flush().

All source code is available at the following Github url.

WiFi Christmas Tree
​http://www.element14.com/community/groups/arduino/blog/2014/12/11/intro-interactive-wifi-christmas-tree


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