Building Connected Things with Windows 10 IoT and Microsoft Azure

Getting Started with Windows 10 IoT

This is a step-by-step guide to preparing your computer for labs that use Windows 10 IoT.

Table of Contents

Many of the labs, tutorials, and workshops on ThingLabs.io use Windows 10 IoT, typically running on a Raspberry Pi 2 or 3, although other boards are also capable of running Windows 10 IoT. If you will be going through any of these labs, tutorials, or workshops you need to first prepare your development environment. This lab is meant to be done before any other labs, tutorials, or workshops to ensure your development environment is ready.

Requirements

The labs, tutorials, and workshops that use Windows 10 IoT depend on the following:

  • Windows 10 (10.0.10240 or higher)
  • Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition or better.
  • Visual Studio Tools for the Windows 10 Universal Windows Platform.
  • Windows IoT Core Project Templates.
  • The development machine musht have Developer Mode enabled.
  • A Microsoft Azure account.

Install Windows 10

Make sure you are running the public release of Windows 10 (version 10.0.10240 or higher). You can upgrade from here. If you are already running Windows 10, you can find your current build number by clicking the Start button (the Windows icon, typically in the lower-left of the screen, on the left-most side of the toolbar), typing winver, and pressing enter.

Enable Developer Mode on your Windows 10 Development Device

When you are developing on Windows 10, you choose what tasks you want to enable on the device. This includes any devices - Windows 10 desktops, tablets, or phones. You can enable a device for development, or just app side loading. For the labs, tutorials, and workshops on ThingLabs.io you will need to enable Developer mode on your Windows 10 device:

  1. Click the Start button.
  2. Type Update and select Windows Update settings from the Best match list. This will open the UPDATE & SECURITY settings page.

    Search for Update Settings

  3. Click on For developers in the left sidebar.
  4. Ensure the Developer mode radio button is selected. If it was not selected, select it and click Yes to switch your Windows 10 installation to developer mode.

    Developer Modes

  5. Save your changes and close the Settings window.

Install a Visual Studio 2015

Install Visual Studio 2015 from VisualStudio.com. You can use the free Community edition, or any other higher edition. When you are installing Visual Studio, do the following:

  1. Select Custom install.
  2. Ensure Universal Windows App Development Tools -> Tools and Windows SDK is checked before completing the installation.

Install UWP

Update Visual Studio 2015

If you already have Visual Studio 2015 installed, install Update 1 from the Extensions and Updates dialog in Visual Studio or from here.

If you already have the Univeral Windows App Development tools (UWP Tools), they will be updated. If you don’t have the UWP Tools, you can select to add them to Visual Studio during the upgrade.

Verify Visual Studio

Verify the Visual Studio installation version. From Visual Studio…

  1. Select Help > About Microsoft Visual Studio
  2. Verify the version is 14.0.24720.00 Update 1 or higher.

Install Windows IoT Core Project Templates

Install the Windows IoT Core Project Templates from here.

Alternatively, the templates can be found by searching for Windows IoT Core Project Templates in the Visual Studio Gallery or directly from Visual Studio in the Extension and Updates dialog (Tools > Extensions and Updates > Online).

Create a Microsoft Azure Trial Account

In this lab series you will use Microsoft Azure as the cloud backend for your IoT solution. If you don’t already have an Azure account, go to https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/ to start a free trial of Microsoft Azure. You may need a credit card for identity verification, but the trial is completely free. If you have an MSDN Subscription you may be eligible for free credits to Microsoft Azure every month. Check your MSDN account page for details.

Conclusion & Next Steps

In this lab, you prepared your development environment for labs, tutorials, and workshops on ThingLabs.io that use Windows 10 IoT.

The next step is to configure your prototypong board and begin building a Thing. Currently the only Windows 10 prototyping board used in labs, tutorials, and workshops on ThingLabs is the Raspberry Pi (2 and 3).

Raspberry Pi 2

Go to ‘Setting Up Your Raspberry Pi 2’ ›

Raspberry Pi 3 (or a custom installation on Raspberry Pi 2)

Go to ‘Setting Up Your Raspberry Pi with a Custom Image’ ›