Client Types

• Symmetric (shared secret / password)
• Asymmetric keys
• Windows Integrated Authentication (WIA)

Token Types

Further information

•  https://technet.microsoft.com/ru-ru/library/mt617220(v=ws.11)
•  https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/maheshu/2015/04/28/oauth-2-0-support-in-adfs-on-windows-server-2012-r2/
•  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/identity/ad-fs/overview/ad-fs-scenarios-for-developers
•  https://medium.com/@robert.broeckelmann/saml2-vs-jwt-understanding-oauth2-4abde9e7ec8b

Few months ago I have spent a couple of evening in implementing an AppService able to delivery events from Visual Studio Online to a Lametric smart clock. I have also shared all the solution code on GitHub.

Well, yesterday, while I was working on other stuff on a customer's AppService, the following icon have grabbed my attention:

It allows to enable a continuous deployment from various sources to the AppService.

In the list of available sources I have found also GitHub... 2 seconds and I have quickly realized that I already have a perfect playground where to test this automagic workflow!

so I went back on my subscription > Lametric AppService and after a click on [deployment options] > [GitHub] and the corresponding authorization workflow, I has been able to select my GitHub solution and preferred branch to use for the deploy.

When the deploy finishes an active deployment is shown under [Deployment Options] so you know what you have live.

...and if you click on it you can also see what Azure have done under the hood:

Interesting and USEFUL when you have to troubleshoot the process in case of an error.

From now every time I push an update to GitHub, well, the magic happen… in a couple of minutes a new version of the app is globally available :-) Yes, scary as it looks...

Luckily I can easily rollback to a previous version if I need: I just have to select a previous deployment and click on [redeploy].

What's Lametric time?

How to deliver information to a Lametric Clock

• Indicator app: allows to show information coming from "everywhere" in real time (push) or near real-time (periodic polling)
• Button app: allows triggering an action (call an external API) with the click of a button
• Notification app shows notifications on the clock coming from the local network.

{ "frames": [
{ "text": "My Project Repository", "icon": "i9672" },
{ "text": "nicold have checked in 'fixed settings labels' 12 hours ago", "icon": "i9672" }
] }

Logical Architecture

Solution Implementation

dotnet new --install Microsoft.AspNetCore.SpaTemplates::*

• A dedicated user profile database
• The possibility to add more Visual Studio connected account to a single ASP identity
• The possibility to add more authentication services
• Reset password, two-factor authentications, and much more

Conclusions

Background

Code Reuse

• Model
• ViewModel
• View (platform specific)

Some Metric

total number of lines of code

10679

(July 2017 - Shared + Android)

74%

of lines of code are not device specific

42%

of lines of code shared with server

46% vs 28%

Model vs ViewModel lines of code

All the source code is available here on GitHub

https://github.com/nicolgit/demo-xamarin-pebblesport

for more information

• https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/android/advanced_topics/binding-a-java-library/binding-an-aar/
• https://developer.pebble.com/guides/communication/using-the-sports-api/

After various searches over internet and tests I’ve used the following procedure that have worked for my tablet.

What you need

• Teclast x98 PRO – K9C6
• HUB USB OTG with power charging host
• USB Keyboard
• USB mouse
• 8Gb USB flash drive

Backup Windows 10 product key

You can download the full guide and powershell script on how backup window product key via PowerShell here. Windows 10 should be able to automatically download the product key and re-activate itself on the same hardware, but just in case the procedure doesn’t work, here you have a backup of your product key.

• Open Powershell and “run as Administrator”
• Type “Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned”
• Type “.\GetProductKey.ps1”
• Save the product key somewhere

function Get-WindowsKey {
    ## function to retrieve the Windows Product Key from any PC
    ## by Jakob Bindslet (jakob@bindslet.dk)
    param ($targets = ".")
    $hklm = 2147483650
    $regPath = "Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion"
    $regValue = "DigitalProductId"
    Foreach ($target in $targets) {
        $productKey = $null
        $win32os = $null
        $wmi = [WMIClass]"\\$target\root\default:stdRegProv"
        $data = $wmi.GetBinaryValue($hklm,$regPath,$regValue)
        $binArray = ($data.uValue)[52..66]
        $charsArray = "B","C","D","F","G","H","J","K","M","P","Q","R","T","V","W","X","Y","2","3","4","6","7","8","9"
        ## decrypt base24 encoded binary data
        For ($i = 24; $i -ge 0; $i--) {
            $k = 0
            For ($j = 14; $j -ge 0; $j--) {
                $k = $k * 256 -bxor $binArray[$j]
                $binArray[$j] = [math]::truncate($k / 24)
                $k = $k % 24
            }
            $productKey = $charsArray[$k] + $productKey
            If (($i % 5 -eq 0) -and ($i -ne 0)) {
                $productKey = "-" + $productKey
            }
        }
        $win32os = Get-WmiObject Win32_OperatingSystem -computer $target
        $obj = New-Object Object
        $obj | Add-Member Noteproperty Computer -value $target
        $obj | Add-Member Noteproperty Caption -value $win32os.Caption
        $obj | Add-Member Noteproperty CSDVersion -value $win32os.CSDVersion
        $obj | Add-Member Noteproperty OSArch -value $win32os.OSArchitecture
        $obj | Add-Member Noteproperty BuildNumber -value $win32os.BuildNumber
        $obj | Add-Member Noteproperty RegisteredTo -value $win32os.RegisteredUser
        $obj | Add-Member Noteproperty ProductID -value $win32os.SerialNumber
        $obj | Add-Member Noteproperty ProductKey -value $productkey
        $obj
    }
}

Get-WindowsKey

Prepare the USB drive

• Download latest Windows 10 ISO – look for “Windows 10 (Multiple Editions) (x64) - DVD (English)”
• Download Latest Techlast W10 drivers (22 October 2015)

• Prepare the USB flash drive. Insert your usb drive in your USB port, open command prompt and type:

diskpart
  list disk
  select disk <disk number>
  clean
  create partition primary
  format quick fs=fat32 label="WINPE"
  exit

• VERY IMPORTANT do not change the label name
• Copy windows 10 setup files from the .iso to the usb flash drive
• Extract files downloaded from Teclast (see above) in a folder on the USB flash drive

Setup Windows

Plug keyboard, mouse and USB flash drive in the USB HUB

Turn on the tablet while repeatedly press F7 key

Select USB key as boot device

Select Language/Keyboard

Click “Install Now”

Select “Custom Install”

You should see many partitions…

Remove them all

Create new partition

Start installation

Setup Teclast Drivers

Once finished the installation, the tablet is still a “poor pc with a super high resolution display”:-) this means, no wifi, no bluetooth, no motions sensor, no TOUCH and so on.

Thanks to Keyboard and Mouse, you can right click on start button, and open Device Manager.

You will find tons of “unknown devices”. No problem, for each of those, Right click and select “update driver software…”:

Select “Browse my computer for driver software”

Select the forder, on the USB flash drive where you have pied Teclast’s software

Fix Touch

At the end of drivers installation, the touch still will not work.

You must copy the file touchsetting.gt (from root of the Teclast driver’s folder) to c:\windows\inf

Restart the laptop and the all should work.

UPDATE: Camera Touch driver problem

If the Camera Driver included in teclast’s zip file doesn’t install, try with the one you find here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzbYIaUEtrV7aVJkdGYwb3lGdUk/view?usp=sharing 

more information in the following thread: https://techtablets.com/forum/topic/help-isp-camera-device-missing-driver/#post-14097

My article on MSDN Magazine is out!

“App development is by definition an iterative process, so you’ll want to understand, in the shortest possible time, how your app is used and how a new version or feature may impact user behavior. How much is a feature really used? What is the user behavior on a specific page? How much time does a user spend to accomplish a specific task? What are the most common hardware configurations? What’s going on when a crash happens? How successful are trial versions and in-app purchases? Do your users run the app offline? These are only some of the questions a telemetry system can answer.

In this article, I’ll focus on Google Analytics, because it’s one of the most widely used providers on other platforms, including the Web, and it’s a great choice if you’ve already instrumented a Web site with Google and want to use the same account for apps. I’ll describe how to collect telemetry information with Google Analytics, and analyze the collected data, such as installed app versions, geographic distribution, and user behaviors, and how to perform an A/B Testing.”

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/mt238405

• Automatically detect settings
• Explicit Proxy Server

as shown in the following screenshots:

remember that after executing the script, Internet Explorer must be restarted.

this script is a widely based on the work of the following guys (thank you!):

• Aymeric Mouillé
• ReubenBond

I tested this script with Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 8.1, but I think that is shoud work with previous versions too…

# This function toggle between the following Internet Explorer Settings
# Explicit Proxy Disabled and automatically detect proxy set to ON
# Explicit proxy Enabled and automatically detect proxy set to OFF

#provide your proxy here
$proxyServerToDefine = "99.99.99.99:80"

function Set-AutomaticallyDetectProxySettings ($enable)
{
    # Read connection settings from Internet Explorer.
    $regKeyPath = "HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Connections\"
    $conSet = $(Get-ItemProperty $regKeyPath).DefaultConnectionSettings
 
    # Index into DefaultConnectionSettings where the relevant flag resides.
    $flagIndex = 8
 
    # Bit inside the relevant flag which indicates whether or not to enable automatically detect proxy settings.
    $autoProxyFlag = 8
 
    if ($enable)
    {
         if ($($conSet[$flagIndex] -band $autoProxyFlag) -eq $autoProxyFlag)
        {
        }
        else
        {
            Write-Host "Enabling 'Automatically detect proxy settings'."
             $conSet[$flagIndex] = $conSet[$flagIndex] -bor $autoProxyFlag
            $conSet[4]++
            Set-ItemProperty -Path $regKeyPath -Name DefaultConnectionSettings -Value $conSet
         }
    }
    else
    {
        if ($($conSet[$flagIndex] -band $autoProxyFlag) -eq $autoProxyFlag)
        {
            # 'Automatically detect proxy settings' was enabled, adding one disables it.
            Write-Host "Disabling 'Automatically detect proxy settings'."
            $mask = -bnot $autoProxyFlag
             $conSet[$flagIndex] = $conSet[$flagIndex] -band $mask
            $conSet[4]++
            Set-ItemProperty -Path $regKeyPath -Name DefaultConnectionSettings -Value $conSet
        }
    }

     $conSet = $(Get-ItemProperty $regKeyPath).DefaultConnectionSettings
        if ($($conSet[$flagIndex] -band $autoProxyFlag) -ne $autoProxyFlag)
        {
            Write-Host "'Automatically detect proxy settings' is disabled."
        }
         else
        {
            Write-Host "'Automatically detect proxy settings' is enabled."
        }
}

$regKey="HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings"
$proxyServer = ""
Write-Host "Retrieve the proxy server ..."
$proxyServer = Get-ItemProperty -path $regKey ProxyServer -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Write-Host $proxyServer
if([string]::IsNullOrEmpty($proxyServer))
{
    Write-Host "Proxy is actually disabled"
    Set-AutomaticallyDetectProxySettings ($false)
   
    Set-ItemProperty -path $regKey ProxyEnable -value 1
    Set-ItemProperty -path $regKey ProxyServer -value $proxyServerToDefine
    Write-Host "Proxy is now enabled"
}
else
{
    Write-Host "Proxy is actually enabled"
    Set-AutomaticallyDetectProxySettings ($true)

    Set-ItemProperty -path $regKey ProxyEnable -value 0
    Remove-ItemProperty -path $regKey -name ProxyServer
    Write-Host "Proxy is now disabled"
}