You’ve heard quite a bit recently about Microsoft’s strategy for bringing Windows to more devices, including IoT. Today I’d like to update you on the commitments we made during the recent O’Reilly Solid and Microsoft Build events to ship developer kits that allow people to run a version of Windows on the Intel Galileo board.
I’m pleased to share that we’ve begun rolling out a new Windows Developer Program for IoT. Through this program we are introducing a new Windows Developer for IoT Portal, with documentation and examples to support the developer kits we are starting to ship in small batches. These developer kits include a Galileo board and preview Windows image that supports the standard Arduino Wiring API set and a subset of Win32 API. This Windows image does not yet support Galileo boards outside of our program.
We are putting out the developer kit in preview to gather feedback. The Windows image we’ve used should be viewed as a proof of concept (read: don’t bet your business on it). We’re sharing this toolkit to find out what folks think, see what kinds of cool things you build with it and learn how to make Windows ever-better on this class of devices. To make things even easier, Microsoft Open Technologies has open sourced much of the toolkit, which will be available on Github in the coming days (more from them here). There you’ll find full access to toolkit components (Arduino Wiring Headers, Arduino Wiring Implementations and porting functions), documentation, sample projects and shield/library ports for Galileo running Windows.
We are rolling out this new program gradually to make sure that everything is working well and we’re able to provide the right level of support. We plan to ship a couple of hundred kits each week this summer and continue adding more templates and guidance to the Developer Portal. We’ve already seen an overwhelming amount of interest in Windows for IoT. As a result, we will not be able to ship this initial developer kit to everyone who signs up. We will, however, continue to share new resources and updates with all program participants. In the mean time we think you’ll find lots of great content to play with on the portal and Github. We’ll keep working to give people more ways to experiment with Windows for IoT, bringing more and smaller devices into the Internet of Your Things.