Hoping to cover all its bases in the emerging Internet-of-Things market, Microsoft is proffering a helping hand to ‘makers,’ DIYers, hardware hackers and other builders of things that may one day end up on the Internet.
Microsoft is shipping a pared-down version of Windows on an Intel Galileo development board in hopes of extending Windows’ reach further into smart devices and Internet-connected appliances.
Software developers and hardware hackers will use the board, Microsoft hopes, to build and test new devices, some of which may end up as commercial products. The development board will also acquaint developers and engineers with the benefits of using Windows to build portable devices and gadgets.
The development kit is part of Microsoft’s larger plan to grab some market share in the emerging Internet of Things (IoT), where data-collecting instruments gather real-time information and transmit it for alerts or analysis.
Microsoft has long catered to equipment manufacturers with Windows Embedded Compact, which is used in a range of industrial devices, mobile handsets, health monitors, ATMs and other devices. The company is making sure these manufacturers know its embedded OS can also work for their IoT devices as well.
But Microsoft is hoping that this new development board will introduce Windows to another set of potential IoT device creators: the independent developers working in their garages, the so-called maker community.
Microsoft first showed Galileo and the experimental Microsoft software during the Build conference at April. The board, embedded in a piano, ran an app that could play a melody on the piano, or capture the notes someone played on the piano and convey them to an Azure cloud service.
The ultimate goal of such efforts is to take information collected from billions of devices and feed it into cloud services powered by Azure. It’s part of Microsoft’s overall “mobile first, cloud first” strategy.
Telemetry
“What’s so great about this Internet of Things is that it’s not just about the thing, it’s also about the fact that they’re connected to the Internet. And so this Windows application on the device is feeding all of this telemetry and data back to an Azure data service,” said Terry Myerson, executive vice president of the operating systems group at Microsoft, during a keynote at the Build conference.
The Galileo computer, which is an unenclosed circuit board, is targeted at a group of do-it-yourself enthusiasts that make innovative electronics. Little larger than a credit card, the board has been used to make devices such as sweet-distributing robots, lighting systems and health devices connected to tablets, smartphones and the Internet.
Galileo competes with the popular Raspberry Pi open source PC, which has been used in robots, Bitcoin ATMs, communication systems and home media centers.
Microsoft is shipping the board as part of a Windows Developer Program for IoT. The recipients of the board appear to be carefully selected, and not everyone who applies succeeds in getting in to the program at this point. But developers can still apply for the board through Microsoft’s website.
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers