Thursday, May 07, 2009 10:38 AM
After setting up the development environment, I started coding a simple application. Visual Studio does not provide a Windows CE 5.0 emulator (only a device - which means that it tries to connect to a real device and I don't have one), so I chose to develop a Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC application.
(1) I first created a Smart Device Console Application. It built and deployed ok, but when running I didn't see any console! I think this is due to the fact that there is no cmd.exe in the emulator.
(2) I then created a Smart Device Application (Windows Forms). This is the kind of application I will have to develop later, anyway. Build and deploying where fine and the form appeared in my emulator:
Nice!
After that, I started wondering what the difference was between Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC and Windows CE 5.0. Wikipedia is pretty good for this kind of questions: check it out here. So, they are pretty close (Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC is built on top of Windows CE 5.0) but not the same. Besides, the Pocket PC emulator screen did not look like the Datalogic Memor screen:
Better check that my application works on Windows CE 5.0, then. How?
(1) Download the Windows CE 5.0 emulator from here.
(2) Launch it from the command line (not from the start menu link, otherwise you will not be able to specify any options for network connections):
C:\Program Files\Windows CE 5.0 Emulator>Emulator_500.exe /CEImage nk.cem /Ethernet virtualswitch
(3) Connect to the emulator: I followed the instructions here. Just a few remarks:
- the <CPU> of the emulator is x86;
- the emulator does not have a command prompt (or I didn't find it), so I just double clicked on the exes to run them;
- you can read the IP address by double clicking on the network link icon on the taskbar;
- you can copy files from your machine to the emulator by creating a shared folder (see emulator file menu) which is accessible through the "storage card" in the emulator windows explorer.
Once I had the emulator connected, I deployed an application (usual method = F5 + select Windows CE Device) built using a Smart Project Device Application project for Windows CE 5.0.
But ... what about my initial Pocket PC application? Would it deploy in the Windows CE emulator? It did!
I created a CAB (deployment project for smart device apps) for the Pocket PC application. I copied on the Windows CE emulator and double clicked it: it installed and run fine!