Uploaded my Part 2 how-to video for accessing the camera stream on Windows Phone 7.1 Mango release. We can finally get the video buffer in real-time for our applications now with the Mango release. This next video shows how to continuously capture and run an image algorithm to be displayed.

Uploaded a how-to video for accessing the camera stream on Windows Phone 7.1 Mango release.  We can finally get the video buffer in real-time for our applications now with the Mango release.

I recently decided to setup a separate site to talk about XAML and want to dedicate this site to robotics, circuits, embedded, CNC, etc.  My seven year old son really wants to know more about engineering and I have three more coming up behind him that will also want to know more.  So time to get back to basics.  I'm going to start with my CNC and post some example videos.

I own the CNC Shark Pro.  A nice CNC that has a USB connection and comes with Vectric VCarve Pro software.  It has a cutting surface of 24 inches x 24 inches x 6.5 inches.  It is only capable of cutting plastics and woods but that's all I need right now.

I just posted an article on how to simulate 3D buttons on a Windows Phone Silverlight application.

I posted an article on making a Panoramic Silverlight Application on the Windows Phone using Visual Studio 2010.   It's a simple example on how to build the app and navigate between screens using touch flicks.

I just posted an article on how to capture an image on the Windows Phone emulator using an Internet camera.  This was written using the Windows Phone Dev Tools April Refresh.  For all those developers who want to capture images on the Windows Phone but can't get access to the camera, this is a nice alternative so you can write apps that capture and manipulate images on the emulator.  Eventually Microsoft is sure to release an emulator that will access the camera hardware but until then try this out.

So my dad tells me he found the receipt for our first computer that he bought for us back in 1981 at Radio Shack.  Of course, I want to frame it and hang it on the wall.  I've always considered myself very lucky to have a father who was forward thinking and spent a good deal of money at the time to help me learn about computers.  It was this first computer that I started learning about writing software.  This was the beginnings of my career that I so very much enjoy.   The computer was a TRS-80 Color Computer.  A few years later I bought the TRS-80 Color Computer 3 myself.  Unfortunately I do not have the original Co Co 1 but I do still have the Co Co 3.  It was a very well built machine and I have very fond memories working on it.

Developer Smackdown

I just posted an article at Code Project for Multi-Touch Robot Control on Windows 7 using Visual Studio 2010 beta 2 and WPF 4.0.  All the source code is available for download.  First time I've posted to Code Project.  It was relatively easy to do.

I loaded a video up to YouTube so you can see the app running with the NXT robot.

I've got Windows 7 - 64 bit Ultimate running on my HP quad core laptop with 8GB of RAM and it's running great.  Here is a list of what is currently running, what I'm doing and a pict of the current task manager performance graph.  It's not even up to 50% capacity.  Sweet... 

• Internet Explorer 8.0 - Adding blog entry
• Outlook - checking email
• Windows Explorer - backing up files to my server, FTP'd to remote server and copying files
• Live Messenger - instant messaging friends
• Microsoft Online Services
• Windows Virtual PC - Windows XP vpc which is VPN'd into client network, running remote desktop connected to remote server, running SQL Server, Analysis services, and VS2008
• TextPad
• Paint.NET - editing photo
• Snipping Tool - screen capture
• Win Amp - playing my MP3s with visualizations rendering
• SQL Server Management Studio - connected to SQL Server 2008, running queries
• Visual Studio 2008 - working on SSIS project