How Microsoft is friends with Arduino and other companies because of IoT

A couple of months ago, at the Build conference , Microsoft announced a partnership with several companies in the field of the Internet of things. In particular, Windows 10 was named the first Arduino-certified operating system. For some reason, this announcement ( on the Arduino website and in the official Windows blog ) was not very positively accepted by the digital electronics community, having excited the traditional holywar. Let's try to figure out what is behind these ads.



The most important positive news worth hearing is that Microsoft understands the importance of the Arduino platform and will make efforts so that the corresponding devices interact well with devices on Windows 10. Imagine a world in which external electronic devices based on Arduino are an extension of the computer’s hardware running running Windows 10, and accessible from standard universal applications with appropriate extensions. This will optimally combine the computing power of traditional computers and the cloud with the potential of microcontrollers to manage devices, creating holistic solutions in the field of the Internet of things.
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As part of the current announcements, the availability of two technologies was announced: Windows Remote Arduino and Windows Virtual Shield for Arduino .

• Windows Remote Arduino is a technology that allows you to control an Arduino card connected via USB or Bluetooth from a universal application, as if its I / O ports were available locally. The developer of a universal application becomes available basic commands for working with analog and digital ports, which allows you to work directly with a number of sensors. The Arduino interface with the computer uses the Firmata protocol, and the board runs a special Firmata Sketch, which executes commands coming from the remote computer. The project is available for Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 as source on GitHub .
• Windows Virtual Shield for Arduino allows you to use a smartphone running Windows Phone 10 as a virtual expansion card for Arduino. At the same time, the smartphone can be used as a text screen, as a gyroscope / accelerometer / GPS, as a speech recognizer, etc. You get easy access to all these features right from your Arduino Sketch. As an example, you can look at the project Picture the Weather .

These projects are currently being actively developed, and it is worth taking them as the first step in the right direction. In my next article, I will take a closer look at the example of how Windows Remote Arduino works.

In the new world, many innovations are made by enthusiasts who love to collect something with their own hands - in English there is a beautiful word maker for this. Understanding the importance of such a community for future innovations in IoT, Microsoft also announced a partnership with the popular portal Hackster.IO , which will now feature many official examples of development for Windows IoT .



If we talk about the industrial Internet of things, then an important task is to build an infrastructure for the interaction of a network of devices among themselves and with customers. One such machine-to-machine interface is DeviceAive from DataArt . As a result of the company's partnership with Microsoft, you can now easily deploy DeviceHive in the cloud directly from the Azure Marketplace store, which greatly simplifies the creation of cloud solutions for the Internet of things.



The Internet of things is currently quite a young direction. The more companies will work together to develop this industry, the more agreements and industrial standards such as AllJoyn - the more devices will communicate with each other and work together, providing us with a great technological future.