Sensor & Location Platform – The 50,000-Foot View

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The Sensor & Location platform for Windows 7 is essentially a set of COM APIs designed to interact with a variety of sensor devices in a standard manner. Rather than explain it in words, here is a neat picture that shows the 50,000-Foot view of the platform components:

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As you can see, there are two major platform components: the Sensor API which is the interface that applications talk to and the Sensor Class Extension which device drivers interact with.

The Location Platform is simply an upward extension of the Sensor Platform in that there is a Location API layer on top for applications to talk to. In addition, the Location API not only supports native C++/COM Apps, but has built-in support for scripts through the scripting interface.

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In addition to these core platform components, there is one other side component which controls the privacy and security Features that the platform provides. This management user interface can be accessed via the Location and Other Sensors control panel item.

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In the coming weeks, we will dig deeper into each of these components for a closer look at the platform. Meanwhile, have a look at this really nice landing page on MSDN that has some great resources for you to get started.

Happy Holidays!!

-- Sensor & Location Platform Team

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