WinCE 5.2 device

iwantthat

I have taken an independent project to code a develop for a handheld scanner running WinCE 5.2. I have never coded for it an flooding for advice where to start. E.g: IDE, life cycle for sync etc.
Any pointers.

Buford T Justice

Visual Studio as an IDE

DaveJoyce

Hi

If you google this "Create windows CE in visual studio" it will give you links to the programs you will need along with Visual Studio.

Active Sync
SDK
etc...

If you don't need off line capability I would look at creating an ASP.NET site that the user can browse from the mobile device.

Otherwise you will need to code for the syncing of the database on the mobile device and the main PC.

Other problems you might not see coming is when the user cold boots the device (extremely easy to do) you may need to reload you software and re-sync. This may also wipe unsynced data.

In any work I had to do on these I found creating the ASP.NET site was the easiest approach as it meant the customer could also on-board new devices without me having to do any work

iwantthat

Thanks for your reply and valued advice. My biggest unknown is the sync life cycle between device and the pc application. Suppose i have a sqlite running on the device which will store the scanned date. What and how the sync would work when connected to the PC.

If you can shed some light on it.

My plan is to create a lightweight application which will gather data from scanner and shoot it to a ReST API to be stored in a database online.

DaveJoyce wrote: »

Hi

If you google this "Create windows CE in visual studio" it will give you links to the programs you will need along with Visual Studio.

Active Sync
SDK
etc...

If you don't need off line capability I would look at creating an ASP.NET site that the user can browse from the mobile device.

Otherwise you will need to code for the syncing of the database on the mobile device and the main PC.

Other problems you might not see coming is when the user cold boots the device (extremely easy to do) you may need to reload you software and re-sync. This may also wipe unsynced data.

In any work I had to do on these I found creating the ASP.NET site was the easiest approach as it meant the customer could also on-board new devices without me having to do any work

DaveJoyce

Hey

The craddle (cable) used for syncing is normally also used for charging. In the years i have been working on them I never changed the cradle, normally just a battery, normal life cycle stuff. But if you are playing on syncing with a web service you will probably just end up using the cradle for charging

iwantthat wrote: »

Thanks for your reply and valued advice. My biggest unknown is the sync life cycle between device and the pc application. Suppose i have a sqlite running on the device which will store the scanned date. What and how the sync would work when connected to the PC.

If you can shed some light on it.

My plan is to create a lightweight application which will gather data from scanner and shoot it to a ReST API to be stored in a database online.

iwantthat

thank you once again for your reply. Could you please share your knowledge on the following

1) When the device is attached to a cradle, what gets synced across. Files, state etc.
2) Could i get the sqlite db from the device across to my desktop app and read the entries there. If yes, how?

Once again thank you for helping.

DaveJoyce

Its been years since I wrote software that sits on the device as I am doing it all in web now

When the device is sitting in the cradle you can browse all the folders on the PC and you can run a program from there too do the syncing

You really need to get a device and cradle for testing

iwantthat wrote: »

thank you once again for your reply. Could you please share your knowledge on the following

1) When the device is attached to a cradle, what gets synced across. Files, state etc.
2) Could i get the sqlite db from the device across to my desktop app and read the entries there. If yes, how?

Once again thank you for helping.

BrokenArrows

Ive worked with wince hand held devices a fair bit using Visual Studio and the .net compact framework.

Personally ive always synced my data over the wifi on the device to my servers as we always had wifi.
However if you dont have wifi them you're going to need to work with the cradle. Unfortunately i never needed to do this so cant offer any advice.