14 DAY TRIAL // Pyxis 2.0 is an open source operating environment written in the Microsoft .NET MicroFramework (which the company open sourced) and available for download free of charge, including the source code, of course. Thomas Holtquist the father of the project insists on referring to Pyxis 2.0 as an operating environment since the platform doesn’t really qualify for an operating system label since it’s missing some components such as User Access Control, according to one member of the .NET Micro Framework team.
Initially developed for the resource-challenged Arduino platform, Pyxis 2.0 is now capable of running on larger .NET Micro Framework devices, as you will be able to see in the two videos embedded at the bottom of this article.
“Pyxis 2.0 is the latest OS from Skewworks. Written in .NET MicroFramework and run on ARM processors with the .NET MicroFramework, this OS is completely free and open source. Creating apps for this OS is done using Visual Studio. You can get an express version free from Microsoft,” reads an excerpt of the platform’s description.
With an update to Pyxis 2.0 Beta Holtquist “added new controls, put applications in the own AppDomains, added support for multiple appliations, added web support, improved render times and much more!”
Customers interesting in taking out Pyxis 2.0 for a spin can do so via Skewworks. Along with the downloads for the platform, they will also be able to find documentation and even sample applications to help them with the testing.
Pyxis 2.0 is a relatively new project, dating back to June 2010, but it has some legacy, and it also includes the Pyxis 1.0 functionality which was migrated from the Arduino, but also additional features and capabilities.
“The point of this is to support faster application development and the ability to run and manage multiple applications on the device,” revealed the.NET Micro Framework team member.
“It is about 1.2 meg so it needs a larger system – Thomas has been using the GHI Fez Cobra and Chipworks platforms. He has done some tuning for his platform - for example reducing the renderings in the interface to get pretty snappy performance.
“He has a whole list of features lined up to add to the platform. He is thinking about moving the project to CodePlex which could be an opportunity to you to help him out with that feature set.”