DB 410 as win IOT applications server?

Products Support DragonBoard410c
#1

Hello All,

We make a diagnostic system that uses a custom USB protocol adapter interface, and our current application runs on Windows. The UI to the user is windows, and most customers use a laptop for portability.

We have a OE customer that wants to do away with the PC Laptop requirement, and would like to enable users to simply use a smart phone as the UI. We want to reuse as much of our hardware and software as possible, so on the software side, since our app is written in VB.NET, we thought that if we could run a small Win 10 environment on a single board device like the DB, this would be less porting work. Ideally then we would run the device as a web server, have a simple browser on the smart phone, or tablet, or PC. We would prefer Wifi over BT, primarily because of Apple and their stupid position on BT.

In reading up on the DB and others like it, it seems most applications consider these as appliances/clients, and it unclear if you can feasibly do what we want to do, which is to run it as an applications server. (lot of bashing of Microsoft in this regards…)

Can anyone share their experiences or comments on above? ATM, given all the Microsoft bashing, we are leaning Linux with a overlay link Mono to run our app, but still uncertain about Linux support of the Wifi web server.

Comments?

#2

For the Windows parts of the question, the “Windows 10 IoT MSDN Support Forum” is probably a better place to discuss Windows 10 IoT. You’ll be likely to attract more eyeballs on that site because there is a bigger community of Windows 10 IoT users hanging out there:
https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/home?forum=WindowsIoT

One thing to consider though is that porting the application to Mono on GNU/Linux gives you access to a much wider range of boards on which to run it. Community boards come and go but if all you require is a Mono runtime and a USB socket then the resulting software should be very easy to port onto almost any Linux-capable board you like (whether part of the 96Boards family or not).

One thing to note about the 96Boards CE form factor is that the HS connector contains USB signals allowing you to make a custom mezzanine top-board if you want. This has no functional benefit compared to plugging you existing dongle into the sockets at the front but does allow for a custom industrial design that is both compact and robust.