Microsoft Ships Windows Embedded Compact 2013

Microsoft has released its operating system for powering small embedded devices such as sensors and industrial machinery.

Windows Embedded Compact 2013 is optimised for building small-footprint industry devices that sit at the edge of the enterprise. Windows Embedded Compact 2013 includes new tools and capabilities –  including new support for Visual Studio 2012 – that extend the experience of Windows and help businesses capitalise on the Internet of Things, Microsoft said.

Compact Windows

Indeed, the new release offers improvements for developers who build devices on Windows Embedded Compact 2013. “With this release, we focused on making developers’ lives easier,” said Steven Bridgeland, senior product manager for Windows Embedded at Microsoft, in a statement. “Support for Visual Studio 2012 offers significant improvements for developers, including a simplified UI and sharper syntax colourisation, and tools such as improved compilers, auto-generation of code snippets and XAML tools.”

With the Visual Studio 2012 support, developers can leverage Microsoft’s Platform Builder and Application Builder technologies that are available as part of the toolset. Platform Builder is a collection of all the development tools necessary for developers to design, create, build, test and debug a Windows Embedded Compact-based platform, said Colin Murphy, technical program manager for Windows Embedded at Microsoft, in a 13 June blog post.

“Platform Builder hosted in Visual Studio 2012 inherits not only the familiar Platform Builder experience that existing Windows Embedded Compact developers use, but also offers all of the latest Visual Studio 2012 experiences as well,” Murphy said in the post. This includes, but is not limited to, the latest ARM and x86 compilers and GUI including ‘IntelliSense,’ which helps speed up app development.”

Application Builder for Windows Embedded Compact 2013 enables managed and native application development using Visual Studio 2012. It provides an easy application deployment mechanism and other Visual Studio integration features, Microsoft said.

Industrial OS

“Application Builder partnered with an SDK spun from Platform Builder gives an application developer the ability to create applications targeting a specific device,” Murphy said. “Application Builder SDKs are all-inclusive and contain not only all matching header and library files, but application templates and tool sets as well, ensuring matching files, end to end, from the device to the app.”

The new OS release is the latest generation of one of the smallest and most flexible products in the Windows Embedded portfolio, designed to power devices that need real-time performance and silicon flexibility, with support for x86 and ARM architectures.