Sebastian Brandes https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/sbrand/feed.xml Tech Evangelist in Microsoft. Just blogging about stuff I work with. Wed, 17 Apr 2019 03:27:31 GMT en-US hourly 1 Tutorial: Fly your Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 with a Kinect for Windows https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/sbrand/tutorial-fly-your-parrot-ar-drone-2-0-with-a-kinect-for-windows Thu, 04 Dec 2014 11:13:13 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sbrand/2014/12/04/tutorial-fly-your-parrot-ar-drone-2-0-with-a-kinect-for-windows/ Back in October I went to an internal Microsoft hackathon in Lisbon and together with an awesome team I built a Kinect controller for the Parrot AR.Drone 2.0. We named it Firefly and during the past 6 or 7 weeks I have received quite a lot emails about how it works and if I could publish the source code.

Read the complete blog post here: http://sebastianbrandes.com/2014/12/tutorial-parrot-ar-drone-kinect/

]]> Moving to sebastianbrandes.com https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/sbrand/moving-to-sebastianbrandes-com Wed, 19 Nov 2014 04:28:39 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sbrand/2014/11/19/moving-to-sebastianbrandes-com/ After having run my blog on MSDN for a short while I am moving back to sebastianbrandes.com. I have written a small post about the move on my new (actually old) blog:

I will continue to blog on my own domain and in the blog post I give a few reasons for the move.

Thank you.

]]> Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 controlled by Kinect for Windows https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/sbrand/parrot-ar-drone-2-0-controlled-by-kinect-for-windows Tue, 21 Oct 2014 14:02:26 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sbrand/2014/10/21/parrot-ar-drone-2-0-controlled-by-kinect-for-windows/ At a recent hackathon at an internal Microsoft event, I got to work with the Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 together with an amazing team of fellow tech evangelists in Microsoft. We had 8 hours to put together a fun project with some cool gadgets that were at our disposal for the day. The team and I ended up building a Kinect controller for the drone, essentially allowing you to control the drone using specific gestures in front of a Kinect for Windows.

Check it out below and please leave comments if you've got feedback!

]]> Tutorial: How to Train a Neural Network with Azure Machine Learning https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/sbrand/tutorial-how-to-train-a-neural-network-with-azure-machine-learning Tue, 22 Jul 2014 02:39:47 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sbrand/2014/07/22/tutorial-how-to-train-a-neural-network-with-azure-machine-learning/ I recently stumbled upon James McCaffrey’s session on Neural Networks from Build 2014 and I thought it was cool how he had implemented the back-propagation algorithm in C# for training neural networks. If you haven’t seen James’ session yet I will strongly recommend you to do so. It’s a great session that presents the idea of neural networks really well and demonstrates how you can implement and train your own using .NET and Visual Studio.

Immediately after watching the session I opened up Visual Studio to try and do what James had just done. Rather than the Iris data set, I used the Wisconsin Breast Cancer data set and after just a bit of trial and error I had trained successfully my own neural network with an accuracy of about 97-98%. I was pretty thrilled! I refactored some of James’ original code so if you want to try and replicate the example from his Build session, you can go ahead and take a look at the refactored solution, which I uploaded to GitHub. You should be able to just clone the repository and build the code yourself. Try it out:

After completing the example with the Breast Cancer data set by coding it myself, I thought of using Azure Machine Learning to do the same job. Azure ML is a new service in Azure and it offers an incredibly powerful set of tools for machine learning. It’s still in preview but the product is already so mature that you can go ahead and start working with it today. Since I already had my Breast Cancer data set, I wanted to see how fast I could train the same network using Azure ML instead of custom code in C#. And, oh boy, it was easy – and fast! I have recorded a tutorial of how to set up the experiment in Azure ML Studio so if you want to do the same, you can see how it’s done. Check out the video here:

Resources

Here are a list of resources I refer to in the video:

As always: Have fun playing around with Azure ML! If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to write me a comment below or send me an email. I will be happy to help! :-)

]]> KiteBuddy: Integrating Cortana Voice Commands into your Windows Phone 8.1 app https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/sbrand/kitebuddy-integrating-cortana-voice-commands-into-your-windows-phone-8-1-app Thu, 17 Jul 2014 04:19:25 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sbrand/2014/07/17/kitebuddy-integrating-cortana-voice-commands-into-your-windows-phone-8-1-app/ When the Windows Phone 8.1 SDK was released, it came with a bunch of new interesting things you could do as an app developer. One of these things is the new API for integrating your app into the speech recognition experience in Windows Phone 8.1.

To get an introduction to how this works I recommend watching session 2-530 from this year’s BUILD conference. Avery Bishop, Rob Chambers and Monica Smith did a great job presenting the new capabilities, demonstrating the actual functionality as well showing how easy it is to set up from a developer point of view. Check out the session on Channel 9 here: https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2014/2-530

There are also a few articles on MSDN that serve as good resources for learning more about how it works. You should check out these three:

In this blog post, I will show how I integrated Voice Commands into my app, KiteBuddy. I will demonstrate how it works from a user perspective as well as the actual Voice Command Definition XML file behind it. Shoot me a comment below the article if you have any questions to how this works. I will be happy to help out! :-)

Voice Command Definition XML

See the XML of the Voice Command Definition installed with the app here:

]]> KiteBuddy: Windows Phone 8.1 app for checking out kite surfing spots https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/sbrand/kitebuddy-windows-phone-8-1-app-for-checking-out-kite-surfing-spots Wed, 16 Jul 2014 13:15:22 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sbrand/2014/07/16/kitebuddy-windows-phone-8-1-app-for-checking-out-kite-surfing-spots/ Recently, I have been working quite a lot with the new APIs in Windows Phone 8.1 (Developer Preview). Honestly, I am pretty amazed about all the new capabilities in WP 8.1 and how everything is just so much closer to the Windows Store App APIs.

To test out some of the features, I decided to go ahead and develop an app from scratch. I just started kite surfing and thought I would make an app to help kite surfers check out good surf spots and current weather conditions.

So let me introduce you to KiteBuddy! It’s a WP 8.1 app for kite surfers and I just released it to the Store.

“KiteBuddy is every kite surfer's best friend. Check out the best kite spots in your proximity filtered by weather conditions and distance from your current location. You can also explore the many kite spots that KiteBuddy knows about and save these your own personal favorites list.”

Check it out here: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/kitebuddy/c617a16d-2f10-411a-8e2f-ef94ddb812af

I will use KiteBuddy as a hobby project to get to work a little more with new APIs and to apply the new capabilities. Next thing on my list to play with is the new ways of integrating with Cortana by defining Voice Commands. I think that’s going to be interesting! :-)

image

]]> Arduino-based RC car controlled by Yammer https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/sbrand/arduino-based-rc-car-controlled-by-yammer Sun, 12 Jan 2014 01:42:30 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sbrand/2014/01/12/arduino-based-rc-car-controlled-by-yammer/ We are using Yammer a lot in my team in MCS and I have come to like it a whole lot. It makes communication with your colleagues and with people outside of your immediate team much faster, as the tone tends to be a little less formal – and therefore faster and easier to read and write. I have had an idea for a fun thing to do with Yammer for a while and yesterday night I finally had the time to put it together.

I have messed a bit around with Yammer’s API and, honestly, it’s really awesome! Authenticating with the API and making requests is really easy since it is all based on REST and OAuth 2. More than 200,000 companies – including 85% of the Fortune 500 – use Yammer and the amount of information that is getting into the social network is just enormous. Also, it’s becoming a more and more central place for knowledge sharing in companies. I wanted to tap into that and developing something that would work on top of this strong trend.

So let me present to you… The YamMoBile! The YamMoBile is a remote-controlled car that I bought on a second-hand web site for 50 Danish kroner (about 10 US dollars) here in Denmark. As a member of you the YamMoBile’s group on Yammer you are able to control it by sending messages that follow a specific format that the car can understand. I connected it to an Arduino (for managing electrical instructions), a .NET console app (that sends the actual instructions), a Windows Azure SQL Database (that keeps track of incoming manages), a service running on a Windows Azure virtual machine (that gets the latest messages in the YamMoBile’s Yammer group by querying Yammer’s API). The result is a 100% Yammer-controlled RC car that my colleagues in the YamMoBile can go crazy with!

I have uploaded a video where I explain how it works and where you can see the car driving around on my apartment floor. Check it out here:

My Arduino-based RC car controlled via Yammer on YouTube.

I am going to take the car to a Maker’s Fair in Copenhagen on January 17, 2014. If you are in Copenhagen you should definitely come and check it out. You can read a lot more about it on the event page on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/events/234039540106876/

Well, that’s all from now. Have a great Sunday! Smile

]]> Windows 8.1: Side load your apps onto your test device https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/sbrand/windows-8-1-side-load-your-apps-onto-your-test-device Tue, 07 Jan 2014 08:43:17 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sbrand/2014/01/07/windows-8-1-side-load-your-apps-onto-your-test-device/ Lately, I have been working on a Windows 8.1 app for a client of ours and, at the final presentation, they brought their own Microsoft Surface RT and would like us to install the app onto it. I have previously messed around with side loading Windows 8 apps onto test devices and it hasn’t always worked out the way I wanted it to. The requirement of signed packages is a great idea to prevent malware from spreading through the Windows Store but it makes it a little harder for developers to easily deploy apps onto test devices.

In this blog post, I will go through a quick way of side loading apps onto your Windows 8.1/RT test devices without having to import certificates signed by Visual Studio in the app package creation process. Here’s how it goes down:

1. Create the App Package in Visual Studio

Make sure that Visual Studio does not generate an app bundle when it creates the app package. This is done by opening the app manifest and choosing the Packaging tab. Click on the drop down menu next to “Generate app bundle” and select Never.

appbundle_never

Then, to create the app package, click on Project (in the top), select Store, and then click on Create App Packages… That will open a dialog box with the following question:

image

Select No as we do not want to upload anything to the Windows Store right now. Click on Next and choose the output folder and the version of the app if necessary. Make sure to select the right type target architecture. I suggest just creating one version: The neutral that will work on any CPU:

image

That will create the app package that you will use to install the app onto your desired target device.

2. Obtaining a developer license on the target device

In order to deploy the app onto the test device, you must have a developer account (associated with your Microsoft account). You will need to register your test device with your developer account. This is easily done by this simple PowerShell command:

Show-WindowsDeveloperLicenseRegistration

You must run PowerShell as an administrator on the device to obtain the developer license:

image

You may or may not already have a developer license installed on the device. In either case, a dialog box similar to the one below will pop up. Simply click I Agree to obtain the license.

image

You will then have to log in with your developer account (i.e., your Microsoft account). Here’s how it looks on my Danish machine:

image

After logging in, it will attempt to obtain a developer license, which should succeed. A dialog box like this will pop up:

image

You are now ready to install the app on your device!

3. Install the app onto the device

Locate the output package files that you generated with Visual Studio in step 1. I usually copy the whole output folder onto a USB flash drive to move it to my target device (for example, my Surface RT). Copy the folder from the flash drive to the device’s internal storage and open PowerShell as an administrator once again.

Navigate to the app package folder inside PowerShell. Type dir and press Enter to see the contents of the folder. It should look similar to this (with respect to a different app name):

image

Then simple execute the following command and your app will be installed onto the device:

Add-AppxPackage YourAppName_VersionNumber_AnyCPU_Debug.appx

Remember to replace the .appx file name with your correct file name. And that’s it! Your app is now installed and you’ll be able to test it out on your device. Easy and simple! Have fun testing your app! Smile

]]> Sebastian Brandes on MSDN Blogs https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/sbrand/sebastian-brandes-on-msdn-blogs Mon, 06 Jan 2014 13:46:55 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sbrand/2014/01/06/sebastian-brandes-on-msdn-blogs/ Welcome to my new blog here at MSDN. My name is Sebastian Brandes and I’m a consultant with Microsoft Consulting Services in Denmark. I work with a variety of Microsoft technologies on a day-to-day basis and on this blog I intend to write posts about how my team and I apply technologies to drive business value for our clients.

This blog will be of rather technical nature and I will strive for writing detailed (and potentially long) blog posts about how to apply a certain technology to a given situation or how to configure a complex product to make it do exactly what you want it to. I love to code and whenever it makes sense I will include code snippets to ease or optimize processes and, as time allows me, I will publish complete sample solutions to be used as inspiration.

I am a Microsoft certified solutions developer and I also hold a range of other Microsoft certifications (in C# programming, SQL Server, business intelligence, Office 365, etc.). I will try to reference official Microsoft material (on either MSDN or TechNet) whenever I find it suitable so that you can learn more about the given technology, its features and its applications.

I look forward to getting started with this blog and I hope you will follow it with interest. Should you have any questions to the material I write, you are more than welcome to contact me. My email address is: sbrand@microsoft.com.

Cheers!

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