Phidgets How To: Creating a Windows CE 6.0 OS Design for Development With Phidgets Devices

Phidgets How To: Creating a Windows CE 6.0 OS Design for Development With Phidgets Devices

Posted by jywilson on Sunday, December 24, 2006 (PST)

The Imagine Cup 2007 Embedded Development Invitational will provide certain competitors (those who make one of the later rounds) an eBox 2300 and a Phidgets LCD InterfaceKit. This article provides a How To guide on the use of Phidgets with CE 6.0 and an eBox 2300.
One of the most difficult problems to solve in the world of embedded systems, is how to interface to the outside world. It is even more difficult if your primary engineering expertise is software oriented, and just creating a small circuit to interface an external device, is like creating an operational Warp Drive, make that read difficult.
Phidgets devices aim to resolve this problem by transforming the interface to external devices to simple, plug-n-play USB modules. Modules exist for Analog to Digital conversion, Digital I/O, servo control, sliders, knobs, relays, in addition to an impressive collection of sensors, from IR ranging sensors to humidity sensors. All of this is accomplished through a USB interface and a collection of API’s with OS support for Windows CE, Linux, and Mac OS X. After you imagine what could be accomplished with the many interface options available at Phidgets, your biggest problem will be how to provide enough USB ports. Of course this can be easily solved through the addition of a USB hub, which is one reason why the use of a USB interface and Phidgets modules make such a great combination.
In this article, I will detail my recent experience using a few Phidgets modules to control a servo and obtain samples from an IR ranging sensor. I used the Phidgets Windows CE drivers to create a small test application, and created my own OS Design using Platform Builder for CE 6.0 (running as a plug-in module to Visual Studio 2005). I will detail each of the steps I took to create a panning sensor head that determines the location of the nearest object within the field of view. Along the way, the following topics will be covered:
How to create a CE 6.0 OS Design for the eBox 2300.
How to include external drivers in your OS Design, not originally included with the BSP.
How to include and configure the CE software components (CoreCon) needed to make a connection for application debugging.
How to make an application automatically load when CE starts up.
How to use the Phidgets API to write a simple application to control a servo while obtaining readings from an A/D interface connected to an IR ranging sensor.
How to install your final OS Design on the eBox 2300 for automatic booting.
To read the full text of this article go here to download document and the accompanying source code.
Jim

本文转自
http://www.learningce.com/Best+Practices/788.aspx