App Communication on Windows IoT - windowsiot

i want to run 2 different BackgroundTasks - one for the communication with my arduino - and one for the communication with other devices by using a webservice. These tasks should be able to write and read from ONE database. But my problem is, that the Windows.Storage.ApplicationData does not provide the SharedLocalFolder. It is null, if I want to use it. Is there any other way where i can store my database that both BackgroundTask can connect to it?
Additionally I found now this path:(Windows.Storage.ApplicationData.Current.GetPublisherCacheFolder(...)). This look very interesting, but if i want to use it I cant write there. I think, because the resolved file path does not exist..
Any other ideas?
Sincerely,

App2App Communication via WebServer (Blinky WebServer):
You can refer Microsoft's IoT sample provided for Blinky Webserver which also depicts the concept of App2App Communication. But you need to read it thoroughly to modify and reuse it up-to your expectation.
Right now I have no experience about Windows IoT and database. Once I got my hands on it, I'll update.

Related

Sending smtp email from microcontroller

This may not be in the right location, so tell me and I'll move it.
I am a recent EE grad and I was hired to build a system that exists on a SoC with a simple 32-bit processor. The system basically monitors several external devices and performs some DSP on it, and then is supposed to send the results using a WiFi device (in my case I have the ESP8266 using UDP) to an email server for logging/notification.
I have been trying to find a library that I can use, but my uC can only program in C and I have it set up for UDP, and everything is in C++ using some other protocol, or something else completely.
I am great at DSP, decent at SoC's and uC's, but when it come to this email server communication thing I am at a loss.
I have successfully configured everything for the sensors, the datapath, the DSP, and connected the system to my WiFi via UDP, but I have yet to figure out how to send data to any servers.
Could someone help me understand how I should go about this?
I have looked into some simple SMTP commands such as HELO, MAIL, RCPT, DATA, etc. but I cannot understand how I actually should implement them in my code.
When I send out the WiFi data via UDP what type of data do I send and how do I format it? Do I need to send any other kind of flags? How should I expect the response? I also know the data has to be transformed into base 64 which is confusing me further.
I am also not super familiar with UDP to begin with, I have been using libraries that are part of the SoC's default library to connect to my WiFi.
I know these may either seem like obvious or stupid questions but it is were I no longer have any knowledge, and everything I find online doesn't make sense, or doesn't attempt to explain it, just gives a pre-made solution
I have found the RFC2821 but it doesn't get any clearer.
I know that's a lot but any help at all would be a lifesaver!
Since you are asking this question, I'm assuming that you are not booting and running an OS suitable for micro-controllers such as an embedded variant of Linux or such. If you were, you would simply be able to take advantage of possibly built in applications or other existing code.
But you don't mention having written an Ethernet stack, so are you using some other library or operating environment which might have some of the functionality needed for an implementation of SMTP?
If you don't and really do need to write your own SMTP client to run directly on the processor you are using, then you should be able to find plenty of examples of source code for this. A quick google search of How To Write an SMTP client showed a few articles with some example code. One article seems to be an exact hit, but you need to look at it further.
However, I would highly suggest just sitting down with a telnet client and connect to an SMTP server you are allowed to use and try the commands you need to just send a message. If you only need to send text, you don't need to get involved in MIME encoding or anything like that.

How to create a BACnet client in C

I am trying to create a client in C that will talk with a BACnet server. This BACnet server is stored on an industrial device (CAN2GO) and I am not sure how I could talk with this device.
I spent quite some time reading documentation for BACnet and I never found a clear example for a BACnet client. I already did some server and clients using TCP and UDP but I don't know how to start this BACnet client and I must say I am getting quite desperate.
I found a library which seems to correspond to what I want which is called BACnet protocol stack but when I tried the whois exemple no device was found (I expected to found the bacnet server but maybe I shouldn't ?).
So my question is : could you give me an exemple in C, or another language but C would be better, that would communicate with a BACnet server (nothing complicated just a question and analysing response). This example could be using the library I just wrote about or if you prefer another library I am of course open to everything.
Thank you very much for your time and answers.
I have used that stack and it is the best open source one you are going to find. If you cannot see anything using the demo\whois\bacwi example from that library, then there is something wrong with your setup. In particular, are you using IP? Are your BACnet client and BACnet server on different machines (they cannot be on the same without some serious tweaking)? Are the two machines on the same IP subnet? (They must be, once again, unless you do some serious tweaking (in this case, setting up BBMDs (BACnet Broadcast Management Devices))).
You will also want to try the "Read Property" example (demo\readprop\bacrp.exe) to actually read a value from the server.
If you are still stuck, then post your detailed problem at the link on Sourceforge, Steve, the author, is very responsive to questions.
I am currently using the stack - just started. I had a little trouble at first, not sure if my problem is the same but.. I basically am using some BAC components made from Schneider Electric (UNC-500) and an old un-supported platform (Niagara R2). On my laptop I created a host server and addressed it to a private LAN network between it and the UNC. My laptop was also using wifi, which was utilizing DHCP, so I had two separate interfaces going. This was my problem. I couldn't read or get 'I-AM' responses back from the UNC. As soon as I turned the WIFI off, I got the 'I-AM' broadcasts. Make sure that you are on the same network as your device, and that there are not other interfaces active. Maybe there is a way to assign the interface to use, IDK. I just started using it.

Register virtual sound device from within application

I want to be able to process audio output of applications (VLC, Rhythmbox, ...) within my own one. Moreover, one should be able to select my application as the sink for the sound (e.g., in VLC or pavucontrol my application should appear as an output device).
How is this possible? Can it be done with ALSA, Pulseaudio, ...? Currently I am seeking for the easiest solution while later performant ones may become preferable. It would be great if most of the configuration could be done via API calls.
Thank you for your support!
I ended up writing a PulseAudio module. There one can create own sinks and directly get access to the audio stream. Have a look at my implementation here.

Chat *Server* on Embedded platform

I am currently building a chat server (meebo style).
The architecture is something like this.
Bitlbee over libpurple is on host B. Its a trivial server on data center.
User communicates with bitlbee via web server (just like meebo) on Host A. The backend of this web server maintains chat session. It just translates the user commands to proper bitlbee comamnd and sends back to host A.
The most important part here is that host A will be deployed in embedded Linux.
I have 2 questions.
To keep the chat session persistent I am thinking of using node.js. As its much more easier to create a real time application with persistent connection. But I doubt if its supported in such platform.
If I use C instead of node.js (I am not using any web server) I can talk to the irc server at host A by libirc. But how do I implement all the web server features in C (like session, url/cookie/post data parsing etc) ?
Also if you think my approach is wrong or there is a better approach please tell me how can I improve this architecture?
Note: This is NOT a high volume chat server.
If building V8/Node.js is prohibitive on the embedded platform, the next best thing would be to take the event loop and platform layer (libuv) and HTTP parser (http-parser) of Node, both written in C and use those as a starting point. These are the same libraries used to build Node.js so they are battle tested and will give you the performance characteristics you seek.
Ryan Dahl, author of Node.js, demonstrates exactly how to use libuv and http-parser to build an asynchronous web server in C.
Put a ZNC server between Bitlbee and the web-based IRC client. Bitlbee will think that the user has never logged out and ZNC can maintain a backlog of messages until the user connects again with the web client.
I would try to go with node.js if that is your choice, also what embedded system is it? As knowing that would help more. Also, another plus for node.js is that it does have session handling built it, but if you wanted to do it in C try and see if you can get a sqlite wrapper running on the embedded device to store the session information.
But, if possible stick to something with less work on embedded devices, feels bad to reinvent a lot of stuff or have to fiddle with compile issues for your device.

Web based NX client?

But I can't seem to find much about how the NX protocol actually works. I have heard it does something with sending X11 commands. But does this mean that the listening clients need to have an x server to run the actual commands and display them?
Basically, I am trying to figure out if it is possible to write an NX client for a web browser, because it sounds interesting to me. Thoughts?
Yes. NX is essentially compressed X-Window protocol.
It's not a spec, but here is a general introduction to how it works: http://www.nomachine.com/documents/NX-XProtocolCompression.php
The client doesn't need to be an X-server, but it will probably need to be able to handle at least some subset of the X protocol.
If you are going to create an web based NX client, make sure you look at noVNC which is a web based VNC/RFB client. Better yet, fork noVNC and add NX support. That way you don't have to waste time on input, events positioning, networking, etc.
Disclaimer: I am the creator of noVNC. Implementing other remote desktop protocols (NX, RDP, Spice) is on my long term todo list (part of the reason for the name). If you're serious, contact me via github and I can give you some direction/thoughts and put you in touch with somebody else who has also expressed interest.

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