Microsoft releases Windows 10 IoT Core, ready for maker boards

With Windows 10 now in the hands of more users, developer related news is beginning to resurface. During Build 2015 this year, Microsoft spent a considerable amount of time going over the benefits of Windows 10 to developers. At the time, Microsoft was shackled by release dates and internal development timeframes, and many of the features discussed at its developers conference had to be shelved for a later discussion.

Over the past couple of weeks, a lot of those discussions are finally happening. Windows ports for Android, the web and iOS apps are finally becoming a thing, and in today’s news, developers looking to leverage Windows 10 for IoT can finally do so. Microsoft announced today, the public release of Window 10 IoT Core for Raspberry Pi2 and the MinnowBoard Max.

In late April of this year, Microsoft went into detail about the Windows 10 IoT Core, explaining that it was developed to target small embedded devices that typically do not have screens or GUI information. Specifically, Windows 10 IoT Core lacks the Windows shell experience, but instead, allows developers to write Universal Windows apps that become the interface for the particular device. Microsoft also highlighted the cores flexibility as it is als designed to work with Visual Studios as well as a plethora of open source languages.

Since April, Microsoft has added a few things to the public preview that released at Build. Among the added features and improvements are:

• Improved support for Python and Node.js, including a new Express Node.js project template•GPIO performance on the Raspberry Pi 2 has improved by 8X to 10X
• Analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and pulse-width modulation (PWM) are now supported via breakout boards and ICs
• New Universal Windows Platform (UWP) APIs give apps easy control over system management features like time zone and network connections

Developers interested in fully utilizing their access to the broad swath of Windows 10 enabled devices should visit the Windows IoT Dev Center. Once a developer is at the Dev Center, they are then free choose their target board, acquire tools and follow a few basic walkthroughs before they are up and running. To receive the tools and target boards, developers will need to have it on a machine running the latest build of Windows 10 (build 10240) and Visual Studios 2015.