Windows10 on DVLUP

Mica or Acrylic with WinUI and .NET MAUI

Mon, 13 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

When using .NET MAUI, we have some great capabilities to affect the way the native platform works. We can take advantage of this part of lifecycle to check if:

Is the runtime platform is Windows?
First attempt to use Mica, if the user’s device supports it (Windows 11).
If it doesn’t support Mica, then we try to use Acrylic.

Here’s what the end result looks like in your MauiProgram.cs code, nice and clean thanks to using lifecycle builder extension methods.

USB Support for Home Assistant in Hyper-V

Fri, 23 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

If you’re running Home assistant in Hyper-V, you’ve probably encountered a significant limitation… Hyper-V doesn’t let you pass-through a USB device, so you can’t use your Z-Wave dongle or zigbee dongle.

So why am I writing this blog post? I have found a way to make it work, feast your eyes on the following screenshot!

Click to enlarge. Z-Wave USB dongle available to Home Assistant container inside Hyper-V

The left side is Home Assistant’s frontend in the web browser, open to the Open Z-Wave Add-On page. Notice in the yellow highlight, that is a Z-Wave USB dongle plugged into the Windows 10 machine.

Installing Home Assistant on Hyper-V

Mon, 25 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This post is a quick tutorial you can follow to get Home Assistant working on Hyper-V so you can take advantage of your PC’s compute power instead of running it on a Raspberry Pi. This installation method is really quick and doesn’t require any command line setup.

**Important**: If you want to use USB devices in Home Assistant, please this different tutorial -> [USB Support for Home Assistant on Hyper-V](https://www.dvlup.com/2020/10/23/usb-in-hyper-v/). The approach used in this article doesn't allow for USB devices.

Step 1 - Create Hyper V Machine

Download the VHDX file (hassos_ova-[version].vhdx.gz) from the home-assistant GitHub Releases page .
- I recommend only using the latest non-beta release so you won’t have trouble with HA’s built-in updater. As of writing this, that is version 3.13:
Right-click on the downloaded .gz file, select “Properties”, check the “Unblock” checkbox and click OK.
Extract the .vhdx file from the.gz file (you can use 7-Zip to do this). Don’t worry about where you extract it to, Hyper-V will make a copy.
Open Hyper-V Manager app on Windows 10.
In the right pane, select Quick Create (at the top right).
Choose “Local Installation Source” option for an OS and use the extracted .vhdx file.
You’ll be presented with the VM’s Settings window before starting it up. Here are some recommendations:
- In the Memory tab, set the RAM to at least 2048 MBs or higher and disable Dynamic Memory
- Under the Security tab, make sure Secure Boot is disabled:
- Under the Automatic Stop Action tab, change the setting to “Shut down the guest operating system”:
- Finally, select the Automatic Start Action tab and set your preferred option:
Start the machine and wait for initial setup to complete and you see the Welcome to HassOS prompt.

Setting up Home Assistant in Docker for Windows with Port Forwarding Enabled

Mon, 17 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I hope that you’ve landed here before spending hours/days trying to find a solution as to why you can’t forward the Home Assistant port in Docker. The solution is frustratingly easy.

Problem

The install Home Assistant in docker on Windows instructions are great, with one exception. It explains the required prerequisites to make sure docker has access to a host disk. However, those instructions have outdated instructions to setup the port-forward rules, which ultimately makes it a waste of time.

Using Windows IoT, SignalR, Azure Custom Vision and Xamarin Forms to Flush a Toilet

Thu, 13 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

My cat uses the human toilet. However, he doesn’t know how to flush when he’s done. So, I thought, “Why not train a custom trained machine learning model to know when to flush the toilet for him? That way, I can go on vacation without asking friends to stop by.”

That single thought began my trip through some great modern developer tools and tech to build a full solution for the problem. In this post, I’ll walk you through everything and you can explore the code and parts list here https://github.com/LanceMcCarthy/Flusher .

Preparing apps for Windows X and Surface Duo or Neo Devices.

Thu, 03 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Preface - This is not Microsoft-provided information, just my guess after digging around the Microsoft.UI.Xaml source code after a conversation on Twitter. This is not coming from any MVP-NDA or other NDA source. I will update this post when official information becomes available.

There is suspiciously missing control from the XAML Gallery app - TwoPaneView. It’s in the WinUI 2.2 release, but there’s no documentation, guidance or examples of it being used (yet). The only thing you’ll find is the API reference, which is automatically generated during the build process.

Draw Your Own Xamarin Pie Chart dynamically

Thu, 18 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to draw your own pie chart just using lines and a list of data items. The code itself is in C#, but the concept can be used on any platform that has a drawing library and ArcSegments.

You can view the entire solution in this GitHub Gist . Okay, let’s get started!

Setting Up

The first thing you’ll need to understand is how the platform’s drawing library makes arcs. In this code, I’ll be using RadPath from Telerik UI for Xamarin most libraries work the same way. RadPath lets you use a custom Geometry which has RadArcSegment object, which has helpful StartAngle and SweepAngle properties.

LoginDialog for easy Live SDK OAuth

Thu, 06 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Almost every developer I speak with agrees that getting a nicely working OAuth flow can be difficult. After much trial and error, I’ve built a UWP ContentDialog that makes this easy and has built-in refresh token support.

Using the LoginDialog

This is very simple to use, when the app launches, instantiate the dialog by passing your Live SDK ClientID and let the LoginDialog do the heavy lifting:

// Pass your app's OAuth ClientId (sometimes called an AppId)
var loginDialog = new LoginDialog("YourAppClientId");

// *** Perform login **** //
// Case 1 - If the user was previously signed in, there is a refresh_token stored and no user-entered credentials are needed.
// Case 2 - If the access token fails, or if it's the first sign-in, the user will see a popup to enter credentials.
await loginDialog.SignInAsync();

if(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(loginDialog.Authentication))
{
 // This will be the access token you can use for API calls.
 var accessToken = loginDialog.Authentication;

 // Make your API calls with the accessToken, for example:
 var user = await apiService.GetUserProfileAsync(accessToken);
}

This works just like a MessageDialog, but instead will show a WebView for the user to sign in, or automatically sign them in silently if they were previously logged in.

The RS5 Update Resources and Tutorials

Wed, 03 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

My friends at Microsoft have put together an amazing compilation of resources of all the new stuff available in the Windows 10 October 2018 Update (aka RS5). Below is a list of some of those resources relevant to developers and enthusiasts, enjoy!

SDK Downloads

EXE - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=2023014
ISO - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=2022797 You can also install the
Visual Studio Installer - Choose the UWP workload and select 17763 SDK under additional components

New Samples and Sample Updates

XAML Hosting API Sample uses the new XAML hosting API and C++/WinRT to demonstrate usage of XAML controls within a Win32 application.
Customer Orders Database Sample has been updated to use the new Data Grid and other new controls in RS5.
Photo Editor C++/WinRT Sample has been updated to build with the RS5 SDK and to use the new single_threaded_observable_vector function to create an IObservableVector for data binding. An additional performance update will be coming out in a couple weeks.
Data binding and MVVM is a new topic that was identified as a need based on the Code First program. The topic describes the benefits of using the MVVM design pattern and how it has been applied to the sample apps.

Videos

Application Developer Resources

Dev Center site page updates (Home page , Get started , What’s cool , Desktop , Downloads , and more)
What’s New in Windows 10 for developers, build 17763
New APIs in Windows 10 build 17763
Fluent Design controls (CommandBarFlyout , MenuBar , TreeView , and more)
Motion in Fluent Design
Gaze input and interactions
Windows UI Library (WinUI)
MSIX
UWP Controls in desktop applications
C++/WinRT
DirectX Graphics Infrastructure (DXGI)
Project Rome
Windows Machine Learning
Store Analytics API
EdgeHTML 18
Progressive Web Apps
WebVR

Driver Developer Resources

Windows Hardware Dashboard
Debugger Data Model API
Windows Driver Framework (WDF)
Audio
Bluetooth
Display
Windows Kernel
Networking
Mobile Broadband
Sensors
USB
Wi-fi
Go here to see a list of comprehensive list of doc changes.

Custom Events and Xamarin.Forms Effect

Tue, 17 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post will walk you through setting up a Xamarin Platform Effect and show you how to wire up an event handler so you can leverage native APIs in the case that the Xamarin.Forms wrapper doesn’t yet have. For this example, I’ll use the Telerik UI for Xamarin RadCalendar.

tl;dr Full source code on GitHub here .

I get frequently asked how to enable RangeSelection (aka Multiple Selection) for the RadCalendar. The native platform calendar controls all have Range Selection available, so we only need to create a Platform Effect to access that native feature.

Epic Build 2018 Playlists

Wed, 09 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Your one-stop shop for Microsoft Build 2018 sessions, slide decks, post links, keynotes and much more.

Living Document Note:

These Playlists will continue to be reordered and updated in real time as new content becomes available. However, the links will always remain the same and you can refresh the playlist page to get any updated ordering/content.

Migrating from PCLStorage to .NET Standard 2.0

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

If you’re a Xamarin Forms developer, you’ve likely used PCLStorage (or other Dependency Service) to interact with the target platform’s file system in the portable class library’s code. However, since November 2017, Xamarin.Forms now uses a .NET Standard 2.0 class library and PCLStorage is no longer supported.

System.IO.File

This isn’t a problem because in .NET Core 2.0 you now have access to System.IO.File’s GetFolderPath and SpecialFolder methods (see System.IO.File in .NET Core 2.0 docs ).

Windows 10 on ARM: Day-One Developer Experience

Thu, 08 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

[EDIT Updated to include ARM64]

I was given the honor of having early access to Windows 10 on ARM (WoA) so that I could chronicle the experience and provide you with tips to ensure that your development experience is smooth. I’ll go through a list of potential issues you might encounter, along my fix for each.

What this post is:

This article is intended to be a quick guide on how to set up the device so that you can deploy and debug your apps. I will be writing this from a UWP developer’s perspective, sharing the experience of deploying and debugging this real time video effects test app .

Creating 3D Icons for your Mixed Reality UWP app

Wed, 06 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Microsoft has opened up the ability to have a 3D app launcher to all developers in the Fall Creator’s Update. In this blog post, I’m going to show you how to build your own 3D app launcher from scratch (accompanying YouTube tutorial video embedded below).

What is a 3D app launcher?

App Launchers

Up until now, you’ve only been able to have a regular 2D tile in the Start menu and the user could place a 2D frame of your app on a surface in the Cliff House (the Mixed Reality home) or on a surface in your HoloLens mapped area. Clicking the app frame would launch the app in the same frame.

"Cannot download Windows Mixed Reality software" error fix!

Thu, 03 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Did you just get a new Mixed Reality headset? Were you so excited that you ripped open the box and plugged it in only to to find that after setting up your floor and boundaries that you got the following error:

Cannot download Windows Mixed Reality software

Screeching halt!

I spent a lot of time digging around the Hololens forums and long conversations on the Holodevelopers Slack and it seemed there was a wide variety of reason for this. However, after looking at my Developer Mode settings page (in Windows Settings), there was an incomplete dev package installation.

Easy XamlCompositionBrushBase

Sun, 18 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The upcoming Windows 10 update, the Fall Creator’s Update, introduces a new design system, Microsoft Fluent Design System . The design system has 5 major building blocks:

Light
Depth
Motion
Material
Scale

You can use any of these in a multitude of ways, however Microsoft has made it very easy to use in the latest Preview SDK (16190). Some of the things that used to be relatively hard, or at the least verbose, can now be done with a few lines of code.

Smart Shades with Windows IoT 1

Tue, 14 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I wanted to be able to have my office shades go up or down automatically, depending on the amount of light outside. Then I thought, why not take it to the next level with Windows IoT? I could design a UI with the help of the recently open-sourced Telerik UI for UWP and also leverage a FEZ HAT’s & Raspberry Pi 3 to drive the motors, detect light levels and temperature.

Manipulation is easier than you think

Tue, 10 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

You know that bottom drawer on the Windows 10 navigation app where the upcoming turns are in a list? You know how you can drag it up or down to show more or less of the content? Want to learn how to create it? You’re in luck because that’s what today’s topic is!

Here’s the result of what you’ll be able to do:

The Approach

Let’s get started. Since there are no built-in controls that do this, we’ll create a simple layout (links to source code at the end of the article).

Surface Dial and Real-Time Video Effects

Fri, 11 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I was given a Surface Dial the other day and I thought “what can I do with this to create a better experience for the user”. One thing came right to mind, applying real-time video effects.

I have a UWP app in the Windows Store, Video Diary , where you can apply real-time video effects while recording a video. One of the features of these effects is to increase or decrease the video effect’s properties. For example, the intensity of a Vignette effect, here’s what I want:

Build A Custom Win2D RadImageEditor Tool

Fri, 19 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Telerik has recently ported the RadImageEditor to Windows Universal (8.1 Universal right now, UWP is coming very soon). It is powerful for something that only needs a few lines of code to use the 20 predefined tools.

But what if you wanted something not in those 20? Or what if you didn’t want to have a dependency on the Lumia Imaging SDK (needed for the built-in tools)?

One great features of RadImageEditor is the ability to make a custom tool, tool group or layer. Today I’ll show you how to create a Win2D tool group and add a custom GaussianBlurTool.

Sending Image Data with parameter using HttpClient Post

Tue, 12 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I recently needed to send image data to a server for processing and thought I’d share how to do that using System.Net.Http.HttpClient in a UWP (Universal Windows) app. First, let’s start with the API’s requirements, it states:

Parameter: image - The image parameter should be the binary file data for the image you would like analyzed (PNG, GIF, JPG only). Files cannot be larger than 500k.

So that means I have to send image data as binary data with the parameter image. I can use System.Net.Http.ByteArrayContent for the image data. To get the image data from the file as a byte[] the approach I use is the following (there are other ways to do this):

Reward your users for feedback and bug reports

Wed, 14 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

One of the new features of DevCenter is the ability to generate Promotional Codes for your app. With this new ability, I’ve started rewarding my users for taking the time to make the app better.

Let’s be specific so that you know exactly what ’m talking about. I have a relatively popular app in the store and get all sorts of feedback, crazy nonsense and helpful alike. For those users whom send in a helpful bug report or would get the following email from me:

Telerik Universal on Raspberry Pi2

Thu, 30 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Most people think of IoT (Internet of Things) as a collection of tiny brains, without user interfaces, collecting data. Some think it’s a remote controlled animal shelter cat toy or a Grant Imahara style robot to do battle. The truth is that IoT is a very broad term, it covers many types of devices, including remote cat toys!

Here’s a Vine of what Windows IoT means to me… Telerik UI on IoT! This post is a overview tutorial, find the full source code on GitHub . (#bananaForScale)