MSN Direct Receiver Emulator

10/16/2008

The MSN Direct receiver emulator is a development tool that runs on either Windows Vista or Windows XP to simulate the receipt and transfer of up-to-date data from the Microsoft DirectBand Network to the MSN Direct sample application.

In a typical user scenario, the MSN Direct receiver receives up-to-date data periodically from FM air waves. However, during development, a standard development board (SDB) might not have access to an actual DirectBand Receiver (DBR) 701 series radio receiver. Therefore, you can use the receiver emulator the already captured data.

MSN Direct Development Environment

The following illustration shows the development-environment architecture for MSN Direct services:

You can create a serial connection between a Windows Embedded CE standard development board (SDB) and a desktop computer that has the MSN Direct receiver emulator installed. The SDB must have a portable navigation device (PND) run-time image based on a design template such as the Portable Navigation Device design template, and it must include the MSN Direct sample application (MSNDirectApp.exe).

MSN Direct Receiver Emulator Overview

The MSN Direct receiver emulator that runs on the desktop accepts a binary data (.dat) file that includes static data. Then, the binary data is pushed to the sample application running on the Windows Embedded CE standard development board (SDB). The sample application uses the MSN Direct services class library to accept and process the up-to-date data, and to send a response to the MSN Direct receiver emulator. For more information about the sample application, see MSN Direct Sample Application.

Test.devicecfg and MicrosoftPND.cfg are two configuration files included with the MSN Direct receiver emulator.

Test.devicecfg

Test.devicecfg is the emulator-configuration file that uses XML tags to configure the MSN Direct receiver emulator, its data source, and its speed rate for reading data frames.

The following code example shows the default settings in the test.devicecfg file:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<DeviceConfig User="spotnet-239823@microsoft.com" Domain="SATURN_B"  
    DeviceID="BNGY8D2LRCJFL6FB" Location="Greater Seattle">
  <DeviceKey Comment="2005.03.04">
    F2F6678C7843A031221C07876D76D76E6E8F4000000000000000000000000000
  </DeviceKey>
  <SystemId OEM="101" Model="0" SKU="701" NetworkId="23" />
  <Coverage>
    <Station Frequency="1047" RefreshRate="5" Strength="130"
     StrengthVariance="0">FrameLog_KCOS_1_21_2008.DAT</Station>
  </Coverage>
</DeviceConfig>

The <DeviceKey> tag contains the unique identifier of theMSN Direct receiver that the MSN Direct receiver emulator emulates. This key is stored in the development environment and is specific to the development environment.

The <Station> tag enables you to configure the speed rate to read the data frames from the data source. Typically, a frame is generated every 113 seconds. However, with pre-configured, static frames, it can be set a minimum of 5 seconds to retrieve data more quickly. The Frequency attribute is also important because it must match the frequency used by the data frames. The <Station> tag contains the name of the .dat file.

MicrosoftPND.cfg

MicrosoftPND.cfg is the configuration file used by theMSN Direct emulator program that specifies the parameters used when you run theMSN Direct emulator receiver development tool.

You can modify MicrosoftPND.cfg to configure the parameters used for running the tool. For example, to change the COM port used for serial communications with the MSN Direct sample application, you must change the commandLineArgs parameter in this file. The following code example sets the COM2 port for serial communications:

-commandLineArgs COM2 

Path to the Receiver Emulator

The receiver emulator is located at %_WINCEROOT%\PUBLIC\SERVERS\OAK\BIN.

See Also

Concepts

MSN Direct Services Development Tools
MSN Direct Services OS Design Development
How to Use the MSN Direct Development Tools