Windows presentation layer using c# and .net hardware requirements - hardware

All,
If I were to develop a kiosk app using Windows presentation foundation, c# and .net, what hardware requirements would I need. I plan on making it a standalone desktop app. It would contain images, and about 1-2 minutes of video. What kind of CPU (pentium, dual-core, what clock speed, graphic card?, memory? )
What if I made the kiosk a web app? What hardware requirements would I need?
Thanks,
Rohit

Not the exact answer, but I would go with the cheapest actual PC configuration. Your software will probably run on an actual 300$ budget PC.
If you need more proof and want to go with older PC. Test it on a relative PC, I'm sure you could find someone with a P4. ;-) Else just buy one used (probably for 50$).

Related

Controlling several experimental setups through one remote computer

I am completely new here and I want to start using LabView in order to control several experimental setups, improve my work environment and start automation of my experiments.
I have several experimental setups in different labs. Each has a PC that controls the pumps, sensors and valves. I would like to use LabView in order to monitor and automate the setups.
I am wondering if it is possible to run LabView on my office computer which controls the setups through the lab computers. This would be very practical because my PC is much more powerful and I can do alot of work from my office. Maybe someone can give me a hint if there is a way to do this or not.
Thanks in Advance

Reducing the impact on diskspace when loading new software on a dev machine.

TL;DR
noob wants to setup dev machine/workspace on old hardware using windows 10 and load up 5+ software programs with similar file size and disk impact as Visual Studios. Wants reduce the impact these programs have on his already resource scarce laptop. Buying new hardware is the last resort, what is a viable workaround?
I have a laptop that I use for school and I am looking into using it as a development work space. (Visual Studio, SSMS, .NET, Jetbrains, Github Desktop, Infragistics Studio and the works) However I also don't want these programs to slow down my regular student workflow (Word, Excel, browser) and take up resources. Additionally some of the development programs I intend to only test drive during their trial period so I don't want them to stick around in my file system. A lot of the things these programs do overlaps so eventually I will be removing some of the programs that are not a good fit for what I am doing(Training for Web Development).
My area of concern is that Memory usage per Task manager floats around 50% and Disk hits 99% on a regular basis. My goal is to reduce the impact of loading even more software to my computer. It currently has the basic office programs for school but I think the cause of it being gloated is that it is a 4yr old computer (Lenovo Ideapad Z370) Intel Core i5-2410M dual-core/4GB DDR3-1333 RAM/500GB 5400RPM, which may not be the most optimal hardware to have windows 10 running on.
To address this problem, could I just load my development programs to a external hard drive and then connect it to the laptop only when I am in "developer workflow" ?
I've done some initial looking into and this solution is said to be non-viable solution because programs vary in portability. If this is the case, could you propose alternatives such as loading the programs to a VM and connecting to it when I need the programs? What are other possible solutions to my resource problem?
I have a dropbox account and a onedrive account and a $25 Azure Credit provided by the school which I have at my disposal. Solution should be cost-effective. Goal is to squeeze the last ounce of value of current hardware before upgrading.
Thanks in Advance! #noob
Hello All I found what I was looking for!
Azure Cloud has a "Developer Ready" image. The VM holds Visual studios and other helpful tools preloaded. However you need to have a MSDN subscription and a Window 10 Professional product key. I had neither so I went with another option of a VM with preloaded SQL Server. From there I was able to load up all the demoware and tools as well as SSMS. I can now access my tools through RDP from work, home, school, any other MS machine. Best of all, now I don't need to buy new hardware and the pay per minute use keeps the price within my allotted credits from Azure.
TL;DR
Free VM to tap into my dev space and develop from anywhere

Is 4 GB of RAM necessary windows phone 8 development?

It is mentioned on MSDN page,is the requirement strict?My system has 3 GB of RAM and I am not thinking about upgrading my system's ram anytime soon.
Also can I ignore Visual Studio,Windows phone 8 sdk on the whole if I pick up marmalade sdk as the primary development tool?
As someone who has to estimate system requirements with some regularity, I take minimum system requirements with a grain of salt. The minimum requirements have some padding, because nobody really knows where the edge really is, and as estimators we have to play it safe.
Usually, you can get stuff to run even if you don't meet the minimums.
Note that this doesn't mean that it will run well.
Not sure about Marmalade. You should consider separating these two questions into separate postings.
For successfully developing windows phone application minimum hardware requirement is necessary.

A PDF reader - please guide - a step by step guidance - reference to guidance-

I have to make a hardware project using a microcontroller, memory, screens, etc.
Is it possible to make an independent PDF / documents reader, which is capable of running on battery power?
Please note I don't want to use any technology which needs licensing. It must be all freeware readers, etc., and programing language can be assembly, C, Flash or any.
I have submitted proposal of PDF reader project (independent hardware). Many say it's impossible. What should I do?
Reading and displaying a PDF document is quite a "high level operation".
You should start with a microcontroller starter kit, with an ARM9 processor or something similar. Then install a Linux operating system on it, include a standard display driver and run an X server. Then you should be able to find a Linux based PDF reader with X drivers.
To 2nd another comment here, I would say that you're not going to to do this with a microcontroller, you're going to need to get some more powerful ARM CPU like an ARM9, Cortex-A8 or similar with a decent amount of RAM.
You'll probably need something that's capable of running Linux if you want to start with pieces of software that won't require writing quite a large volume of software from scratch.
Note that for commercial devices that are out there, including the Kindle, run Linux, and aren't based on a micrcontroller.
You might be best off getting something like a BeagleBoard, attach a display to that, and start from there with an X-based PDF viewer.

embedded application

In the last two months I've worked as a simple application using a computer vision library(OpenCV).
I wish to run that application directly from the webcam without the need of an OS. I'm curious to know if that my application can be burned into a chip in order to not have the OS to run it.
Ofcorse the process can be expensive, but I'm just curious. Do you have any links about that?
ps: the application is written in C.
I'd use something bigger than a PIC, for example a small 32 bit ARM processor.
Yes. It is theoretically possible to port your app to PIC chips.
But...
There are C compilers for the PIC chip, however, due to the limitations of a microcontroller, you might find that the compiler, and the microcontroller itself is far too limited for computer vision work, especially if your initial implementation of the app was done on a full-blown PC:
You'll only have integer math available to you, in most cases, if not all (can't quote me on that, but our devs at work don't have floating point math for their PIC apps and it causes many foul words to emanate from their cubes). Either that, or you'll need to hook to an external math coprocessor.
You'll have to figure out how to get the PIC chip to talk USB to the camera. I know this is possible, but it will require additional hardware, and R&D time.
If you need strict timing control,
you might even have to program the
app in assembler.
You'd have to port portions of OpenCV to the PIC chip, if it hasn't been already. My guess is not.
If your'e not already familiar with microcontroller programming, you'll need some time to get up to speed on the differences between desktop PC programming and microcontroller programming, and you'll have to gain some experience in that. This may not be an issue for you.
Basically, it would probably be best to re-write the whole program from scratch given a PIC chip constraint. Good thing is though, you've done a lot of design work already. It would mainly be hardware/porting work.
OR...
You could try using a small embedded x86 single-board PC, perhaps in the PC/104 form factor, with your OS/app on a CF card. It's a real bone fide PC, you just add your software. Good thing is, you probably wouldn't have to re-write your app, unless it had ridiculous memory footprint. Embedded PC vendors are starting to ship boards based on 1 GHz Intel Atoms, and if you needed more help you could perhaps hook a daughterboard onto the PC-104 bus. You'll work around all of the limitations listed above, as your using an equivalent platform to the PC you developed your app on. And it has USB ports! If you do a thorough cost analysis and if your'e cool with a larger form factor, you might find it to be cheaper/quicker to use a system based on a SBC than rolling a solution using PIC chips/microcontrollers.
A quick search of PC-104 on Google would reveal many vendors of SBCs.
OR...
And this would be really cheap - just get a off-the-shelf cheap Netbook, overwrite the OEM OS, and run the code on there. Hackish, but cheap, and really easy - your hardware issues would be resolved within a week.
Just some ideas.
I think you'll find this might grow into pretty large project.
It's obviously possible to implement a stand-alone hardware solution to do something like this. Off the top of my head, Rabbit's solutions might get you to the finish-line faster. But you might be able to find some home-grown Beagle Board or Gumstix projects as well.
Two Google links I wanted to emphasize:
Rabbit: "Camera Interface Application Kit"
Gumstix: "Connecting a CMOS camera to a Gumstix Connex motherboard"
I would second Nate's recommendation to take a look at Rabbit's core modules.
Also, GHIElectronics has a product called the Embedded Master that runs .Net MicroFramework and has USB host/device capabilities built-in as well as a rich library that is a subset of the .Net framework. It runs on an Arm processor and is fairly inexpensive (> $85). Though not nearly as cheap as a single PIC chip it does come with a lot of glue logic pre-built onto the module.
CMUCam
I think you should have a look at the CMUcam project, which offers affordable hardware and an image processing library which runs on their hardware.