Windows CE Programming

(Updated 28. april 2010: see bottom)

If you need to print, show, generate or analyse DataMatrix Barcodes on a Windows Mobile device, you can now use this class library. I have ported the code to be compatible with Compact Framework 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005.

The original full .NET framework source code is located at SourceForge.

Here is first a screenshot of the test application running on a Windows Mobile device using the DataMatrixNetCF class:

Continue reading ‘DataMatrix.Net ported to Compact Framework’ »

One more small tip:

to change the today screen softkeys, simply change the following registry keys:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Today\Keys]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Today\Keys\112]
@=”Pocket Excel”
“Open”=”\\Windows\\pxl.exe”

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Today\Keys\113]
@=”PocketWord”
“Open”=”\\Windows\\pword.exe”

One more small tip:

to disable the today screen and prohibit a user from starting anything from there, simply change the following registry keys:

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Today]
“Enabled”=dword:00000001

change this to

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Today]
“Enabled”=dword:00000000

But be warned, the today screen will not refresh and so the background will not refresh. If you leave (minimize) an app, the screen may partially not refresh.

isEnetOnline

During some testing of the event notifcation interface on a PocketPC device, I found that some essential events are declared but will never be fired. Two of these unsupported events are: NOTIFICATIONEVENTNETCONNECT and NOTIFICATIONEVENTNETDISCONNECT. So I started a small eVC4 workspace for ITC Pocket PC with Windows Mobile 2003 with one simple test application to play with the mibInterface.dwOperStatus. Then I got an app, that will start another process (given by the command line). This tool is now called iRunOnNet.exe and will launch an exe (ie call “iRunOnNet.exe \windows\calc.exe” to have the caculator come up on ethernet connect), if an ethernet connection (the ITC device designed for has a dock ethernet connector) comes up. You can stop the hidden tool by launching it again with the argument -stop.

As a second goal, I would like to get a simple DLL that will export the status of an ethernet connection. Additionally I made a tool (isOnlineDLLtest.exe) that is used to test the functionallity of the DLL. The DLL only exports one function fnIsEnetOnline(). This will give a 0, if ethernet is offline and 1, if ethernet is online. A second export is the variable nIsEnetOnline which will hold the last status. The isOnlineDllTest uses the function fnIsEnetOnline() in a timer and simply shows a text with the last result of this call.

iRunOnNet is a stand-alone app and does not need isEnetOnline.dll. You can either directly use iRunOnNet to have an application launch on a ethernet network connection or you have your own apllication use isEnetOnline.dll in a timer to check for an ethernet connect. The sources for all this is attached.

Continue reading ‘isEnetOnline: a tool to detect ethernet connect on Windows Mobile’ »