Exciting news in the world of IoT! Back in August, Microsoft announced the preview build for the Windows IoT Core operating system for the Raspberry Pi 2 and the MinnowBoard Max.
Windows 10 IoT Core is a new edition for Windows targeted towards small, embedded devices that may or may not have screens. For devices with screens, Windows 10 IoT Core does not have a Windows shell experience; instead you can write a Universal Windows app that is the interface and “personality” for your device. IoT core designed to have a low barrier to entry and make it easy to build professional grade devices. It’s designed to work with a variety of open source languages and works well with Visual Studio.
This is cool stuff. IoT Core supports WiFi and Bluetooth connections, works with Visual Studio 2015, and is compatible with alternative languages such as Node.js and Python. Getting started is simple, and Microsoft even publishes a number of samples on GitHub.
Yesterday, Microsoft introduced a new IoT Core Starter Kit – which will give you everything you need to start developing IoT solutions from a hardware perspective (except your Windows 10 PC with Visual Studio 2015). It comes with sensors, electronic parts, wires, and cables. It also includes an SD card loaded with Windows IoT Core. The kit costs $115 and can be purchased from the co-producer Adafruit here.
Microsoft also announced a number of updates to the IoT Core preview build:
- Support for pulse-width modulation (PWM)
- Support for analog-to-digital converters (ADC)
- Fixed issues with USB HID drivers
- Other bug fixes
At Perficient, we are committed to IoT on the Microsoft platform and feel this market is poised for growth. If you wanna get started researching, exploring, building, and testing IoT – pick up the new starter kit today!
