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Check your US Postal Service Package Status with PowerShell!

Hey guys!

Been a while since I wrote up a fun little PowerShell REST API tool, so here we go! I taught a four day PowerShell boot camp for a Fortune 50 company, and during the event, one of my students called out the need to track his package delivery online.

The discussion quickly turned high-dork, as we dug in to see if there was a convenient way to get this information.

It turns out that the United States Postal Service has a REST API we can use to check for the status of package delivery.

You’ll need to sign up here for REST Api access first : https://www.usps.com/business/web-tools-apis/welcome.htm

To make a request, you need to query the following URL:

http://production.shippingapis.com/ShippingAPI.dll?API=TrackV2&XML=$xml 

You’ll notice the $XML, this is a special XML payload that needs to contain data in a certain format, here’s the template for a package delivery status page:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> 
  <TrackFieldRequest SERID="$userID">
    <TrackID ID="$pkgID"> 
    </TrackID> 
  </TrackFieldRequest> 

$pkgID will be a long package tracking number you’ll get in your e-mail when something is mailed to you, it’s about 22 characters long.

When you’ve signed up, you’ll get an e-mail like this one, this is your userId

From here on, it is pretty straightforward, all we have to do is use Invoke-WebRequest to query the URL and then check for some errors (I’ve planned for you to forget to provide your UserID, or to not provide a PKgID. If you leave these out…I’m not sure what you expect this to do :) ). If no errors are there, your package information will be contained within $Response.Content.TrackResponse.TrackInfo.TrackDetail.

Here’s an image of what it looks like!

Here’s the code!

<#
.Synopsis
   Use this tool to query the US Postal Service to find out where your packages are!
.DESCRIPTION
   Use this tool to query the US Postal Service to find out where your packages are!
.EXAMPLE
    Get-USPSPackageStatus -UserID 578FOXDEPLOY -pkgID 94HAMHAMHAMHAM95621412407
 
EventTime EventDate     Event                                 EventCity EventState EventZIPCode EventCountry FirmName Name AuthorizedAgent
--------- ---------     -----                                 --------- ---------- ------------ ------------ -------- ---- ---------------
8:45 am   June 15, 2015 Out for Delivery                      MARIETTA  GA         30066                                   false          
8:35 am   June 15, 2015 Sorting Complete                      MARIETTA  GA         30066                                   false          
6:00 am   June 15, 2015 Arrived at Post Office                MARIETTA  GA         30066                                   false          
1:28 am   June 15, 2015 Departed USPS Facility                ATLANTA   GA         30320                                   false          
2:43 pm   June 14, 2015 Arrived at USPS Facility              ATLANTA   GA         30320                                   false          
4:44 am   June 13, 2015 Departed USPS Facility                ANAHEIM   CA         92899                                   false          
9:31 pm   June 12, 2015 Arrived at USPS Origin Facility       ANAHEIM   CA         92899                                   false          
8:16 pm   June 12, 2015 Accepted at USPS Origin Sort Facility SANTA ANA CA         92704                                   false          
 
 
.EXAMPLE
   Get-USPSPackageStatus -UserID 578FOXDE2122 -pkgID 94HAMHAMHAMHAM9562141240
The most recent event we can track is below
 
EventDate                                                                     EventTime                                                                     Event                                                                        
---------                                                                     ---------                                                                     -----                                                                        
June 15, 2015                                                                 1:43 pm                                                                       Delivered, In/At Mailbox                                                     
Here is the summary of what we know about the package
 
 
 
EventTime               EventDate               Event                   EventCity               EventState             EventZIPCode           EventCountry           FirmName               Name                   AuthorizedAgent       
---------               ---------               -----                   ---------               ----------             ------------           ------------           --------               ----                   ---------------       
8:45 am                 June 15, 2015           Out for Delivery        MARIETTA                GA                     30066                                                                                       false                 
8:35 am                 June 15, 2015           Sorting Complete        MARIETTA                GA                     30066                                                                                       false                 
6:00 am                 June 15, 2015           Arrived at Post Office  MARIETTA                GA                     30066                                                                                       false                 
1:28 am                 June 15, 2015           Departed USPS Facility  ATLANTA                 GA                     30320                                                                                       false                 
2:43 pm                 June 14, 2015           Arrived at USPS Faci... ATLANTA                 GA                     30320                                                                                       false                 
4:44 am                 June 13, 2015           Departed USPS Facility  ANAHEIM                 CA                     92899                                                                                       false                 
9:31 pm                 June 12, 2015           Arrived at USPS Orig... ANAHEIM                 CA                     92899                                                                                       false                 
8:16 pm                 June 12, 2015           Accepted at USPS Ori... SANTA ANA               CA                     92704                                                                                       false                 
 
 
Your package was delivered!
#>
function Get-USPSPackageStatus {
param($UserID="Something",
$pkgID='9400111899562141240724',[switch]$Passthru)
 
$xml = @"
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<TrackFieldRequest USERID="$userID">
    <TrackID ID="$pkgID">
   </TrackID>
</TrackFieldRequest>
"@
 
$url = @"
http://production.shippingapis.com/ShippingAPI.dll?API=TrackV2&XML=$xml
"@
 
#Get the response and save in a variable $Response
$response = Invoke-WebRequest $url
     
    #Check for an error
 
        if ((([xml]$response.Content | select -ExpandProperty Error -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) -ne $null) -or ([xml]$response.Content | select -ExpandProperty TrackResponse | select -Expand TrackInfo  | select -ExpandProperty Error -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) -ne $null){
     
            if (([xml]$response.Content | select -expand Error -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue).Number -eq "80040B1A")  {
                Write-Warning "We hit an error: Check your user credentials, specifically the value for `$userID :$UserID"
                BREAK
                }
 
            if (([xml]$response.Content | select -ExpandProperty TrackResponse | select -Expand TrackInfo  | select -ExpandProperty Error -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) -ne $null){'ham'
                Write-Warning "We hit an error: Check the package ID you specified, `$pkgID :$pkgID"
                BREAK
            }
                 
        }
 
    #Show the most recent event
 
    $status = [xml]$Response.Content  | select -expand TrackResponse | select -ExpandProperty TrackInfo | select -expand TrackSummary | select EventDate,EventTime,Event
     
    Write-output "The most recent event we can track is below"
     
        if ($Passthru){$status}
            else{
                $status | select EventDate,EventTime,Event | Format-Table -AutoSize
            }
 
    Write-output "Here is the summary of what we know about the package"
    #take the response which is XML and Cast it to make PowerShell parse it better
    $details = [xml]$Response.Content  | select -expand TrackResponse | select -ExpandProperty TrackInfo | select -expand TrackDetail 
 
        if ($Passthru){$details}
            else{
                $details | Format-Table -AutoSize
            }
 
    if ($status.Event -like "Delivered*"){
        Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green "Your package was delivered!"
    }
 
} 

Part IV - DSC - One-Click Domain Controller

This post is part of the Learning PowerShell DSC Series, here on FoxDeploy. Click the banner to return to the series jump page!

Hey guys, I haven’t forgotten about you, but it’s been a very busy month here, with me traveling to Redmond for some exciting Microsoft meetings and then back and forth to Minneapolis for a new client!

I’ve been receiving your messages and have now released the final step in this one-click Domain controller DSC Build. To recap, we left off with a DSC Config that would make our machine a domain controller, but that was it.

We didn’t have functional DHCP for clients to find us, or any other bells and whistles. In this post, we’ll be adding on DHCP so clients can get an IP address, as well as DNS to help our Machines Domain Join to our new DC. If you tried Domain Joining with our build from last time, you would have been quite disappointed. Not this time!

What has to go :

Previously, we had a single config file that did some really good stuff for us, setting up a workgroup and then making a new local admin. We’re going to gut all of that stuff, because setting up a system with a DSC Config needs to be idempotent. That means that the config needs to be able to run over and over without breaking stuff, and the previous build would do just that. If we draft a config that will result in changes every time the config is validated, we’ve created a problem.

The issue in our last config stemmed from the fact that it would change the system’s name and also add it to a work group. Then, later in the config we make it a domain controller. What would happen if the DSC config were re-evaluated is that the machine would throw an error when it got to the portion of the .mof telling it to join a workgroup. Domain Controllers can’t leave a domain until they’ve lost all of their FSMO Roles, so this is an invalid config. Bad Stephen!

As it is, that bit about joining a workgroup turned out to be wasted space, so we’ll remove that too. The full code is available below, as well as here on my GitHub site.

What’s new and what does it do

For this post, you’ll need the xNetworking Resource, found here

• https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/xNetworking-Module-818b3583

As well as the xDHCPServer Resource, found here

• https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/xDhcpServer-PowerShell-f739cf90#content

You’ll also need the xComputerManagement and xActiveDirectory Resources, which can be found here:

• https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/xActiveDirectory-f2d573f3
• https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/xComputerManagement-Module-3ad911cc

Prepare your DSC Target Node by copying the folders in the zips to the Modules folder, in this path

$env:ProgramFiles\\WindowsPowerShell\\Modules

The big new steps we’re adding are the following:

Set a Static IP Address

The end goal of this whole shebang was to have a working DHCP server, and DHCP can’t give out IP Addresses unless they have a fixed IP themselves. In this config block , we set a Static IP of 10.20.30.1 and rename the Adapter along the way.

xIPAddress NewIPAddress { 
  IPAddress = "10.20.30.1" 
  InterfaceAlias = "Ethernet" 
  SubnetMask = 24 
  AddressFamily = "IPV4"
}

Enable the DHCP Windows Feature

This one was kind of a pain, as it was hard to figure out what the name was of the DHCP Server Role! Turns out it’s DHCP not DHCPServer (as it is listed in Get-WindowsFeature). All we do here is make sure that the DHCP server is installed, and we do it after configuring the IP address to prevent an error which would shut down our config.

WindowsFeature DHCP { 
  DependsOn = '[xIPAddress]NewIpAddress' 
  Name = 'DHCP' 
  Ensure = 'PRESENT' 
  IncludeAllSubFeature = $true
}

Enable the DHCP Address Scope

You can get super complex with Windows Server Networking using DHCP and DNS, but I always like to keep things simple, especially in my testlab. This configuration resource essentially runs us through the DHCP Wizard and ensures that a DHCP Scope Exists, giving out IP addresses from 10.20.30.5 all the way up to 250.

xDhcpServerScope Scope
     {
      DependsOn = '[WindowsFeature]DHCP'
      Ensure = 'Present'
      IPEndRange = '10.20.30.250'
      IPStartRange = '10.20.30.5'
      Name = 'PowerShellScope'
      SubnetMask = '255.255.255.0'
      LeaseDuration = '00:08:00'
      State = 'Active'
      AddressFamily = 'IPv4'
     } 

Specify the DNS server for DHCP clients to use

If you don’t get this part, your DNS Clients will throw up an ‘ ERROR: Could not join to the domain VAS_ERR_DNS: unable to lookup any DNS SRV records for’, which should be your clue to ensure that you’ve specified option 6 in your DNS settings

xDhcpServerOption Option
     {
         Ensure = 'Present'
         ScopeID = '10.20.30.0'
         DnsDomain = 'fox.test'
         DnsServerIPAddress = '10.20.30.1'
         AddressFamily = 'IPv4'
     }

The Complete Config

If you’re following from home, go ahead and delete everything from the last DSC post from line 29 to 54.

Or, if you’re laz–uh, more efficiently minded, copy and paste this code instead.

Now that we know what we’re doing, let’s give it a whirl!

Testing it out

My network is laid out like this

I’ve got my future DHCP Server and a random client Windows 10 VM both sitting on the same network. Now we’re going to enforce the configuration on my DSC Client, and then watch and see my workstation pull down a DHCP Address!

You might be thinking:

‘Hey Stephen, why not just copy the files down with DSC!’

and that’s a great question. As it turns out, you can do something like that by using what’s called a DSC Partial Configuration…which I’m still figuring out. Once I understand it, I’ll write a post about it. The long and short of it now is that you can’t reference a resource and also copy a resource within the same config because…uh…reasons.

You’re boring me, let’s get to it!

The only thing that’s left is to hit F5 and watch as my machine gets config’d! First we apply the new computer name… which needs a reboot

Now, we reboot and just relaunch the configuration. We could just wait…but it’s more fun to hit -Force and watch the whole thing happen in real time

If all of this worked (and it looks like it did!) we should now be able to go over to our test machine and run a DHCP /renew and see an IP address come over.

An important piece of getting this Domain Controller accepting domain joins is to make sure that new PCs to the domain can find the DC. This means that they need to ask a DNS server for the SRV record of a Domain Controller holding the Global Catalog role. We’ll run a ipconfig /all and see if our DNS Server setting is registered.

Now is where I started to get excited. See, my whole reason for going down this path is that I think making a domain controller in a Lab environment can be very daunting for first-timers, and wanted to help lower that barrier to entry. If my client machine can see the DC, then it should be able to Domain Join now. So the moment of truth…

Now…to hit OK…

Welcome to the FoxDeploy Domain!!!

Wrapping it up

I will admit, I jumped up and down when I got this part to work. We now have a one-click, single-stop Domain Controller build, perfect to use a stepping stone into whatever else you’d want to do on a domain controller. It really is kind of amazing to me that this all works, knowing how hard it would be to do this level on configuration using something like SCCM/Configuration Manager.

From here? The next step in our series will have us joining clients to this domain as well, and from there, we can do whatever you’d want to do with DSC. If you’ve got an idea or a situation from work, send me a message, and you might just be the next blog post here in this series.

Part III - Using Advanced GUI Elements in PowerShell

This post is part of the Learning GUI Toolmaking Series, here on FoxDeploy. Click the banner to return to the series jump page!

Welcome back to the GUI Series here on FoxDeploy.com! In the previous weeks, I’ve had a lot of feedback and requests from you guys (which I absolutely love! Assuming I don’t need sleep, I’m content to stay up till the wee hours of the morning helping you guys out and responding to your comments or requests, so keep ‘em coming!). As for where this blog is heading…I’ve really been bit hard by the maker bug, and I recently purchased a RaspBerry Pi 2, which is super awesome and incredibly powerful. Direct deploying a program from Visual Studio to this little guy and seeing it light up and project content to my HDMI monitor really makes it feel like I’m doing something tangible. I’ll be making a whole series of posts about cool things you can do with the Pi. If you have any ideas, send ‘em over!

We’re going to cover a number of topics in this one, namely ‘how do I do ex’ questions. We’ll have two somewhat silly examples to start, followed by an actually useful GUI to create a user to wrap us up here.

We’ll specifically be hitting all of these guys here, in order.

• Hide a UI Element (by special request)
• Use Checkboxes
• Use radio buttons (by special request)
• Populate a drop-down box automatically

Also, in a big departure from the past, I’ll not be posting full code on here anymore. From now on, code samples from here will always be linked and kept up-to-date on GitHub. You can find the code from this post here: https://github.com/1RedOne/Post_III

Alright, let’s get started. Power up Visual Studio and create a new project, specify ‘WPF’ as your type in the search box.

Hide a UI element

We’ll draw an image and set it to invisible, and then add a button that will make it appear or disappear. You can imagine and endless amount of examples where this could be useful

Now, let’s add a meaningful image (read:skybison) and then make it hidden. Finally, let’s add a button.

The XAML

<Window x:Class="BlogPostIII.MainWindow"
        xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
        xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
        xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
        xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
        xmlns:local="clr-namespace:BlogPostIII"
        mc:Ignorable="d"
        Title="MainWindow" Height="350" Width="525">
    <Grid x:Name="background" Background="#FF1D3245">
        <Image x:Name="image" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Height="100" Margin="171,154,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="100" Source="C:\Users\sred13\Dropbox\My Code\Migmon\htdocs\Appa.png" Visibility="Hidden" />
        <Button x:Name="button" Content="Reveal Hidden Skybisons" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Height="34" Margin="10,277,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="155"/>
 
    </Grid>
</Window>

This will give us a form with an image, and a button. To hook the button up to the image, we just need to add a few snippets of code:

$WPFbutton.Add_Click({
    if ($WPFimage.Visibility -ne 'Visible'){
      $WPFimage.Visibility = 'Visible'
    }
    else {
      $WPFimage.Visibility = 'Hidden'
    }
})

And…that’s it!

Clicking the button will reveal or hide the image. You could use the same mechanism to set an item from Disabled to Enabled as well, we’re just illustrating the principles here. Moving right along…

Use Checkboxes

Alright, what we’ll do now is draw a check box, and add a second Sky Bison. We’ll make both Bisons invisible, and if you check the box, you’ll get TWO bisons for the price of one! If you uncheck the box, the Bison dies. I’m sorry kid, but that’s just a fact of life.

To save space, I’ll only show you the PowerShell behind making this work. Check the github link if you want the XAML or Project file.

This code is garbage and ripe to be simplified! Send a PR in to fix it, if you’d like!

$WPFbutton.Add_Click({
  if ($WPFimage.Visibility -ne 'Visible'){
    if ($WPFcheckBox.IsChecked -eq $true){
      $WPFimage.Visibility = "Visible"
      $WPFimage_Copy.Visibility = 'Visible'
    }
    else {
      $WPFimage.Visibility = 'Visible'
    }
  } 
  elseif ($WPFimage.Visibility -ne 'Visible' -and {$WPFcheckBox.IsChecked -eq $false})
    {
      $WPFimage.Visibility = 'Visible'
    }
  else{$WPFimage.Visibility,$WPFimage_Copy.Visibility = 'Hidden','Hidden'}
})
 
$WPFcheckBox.Add_Checked({
    if ($WPFimage.Visibility -eq 'Visible'){
        $WPFimage_Copy.Visibility = 'Visible'
      }
    else{
      $WPFimage_Copy.Visibility = 'Hidden'
    }
  })

And the result :

Clicking the checkbox makes TWO Appa’s appear!

Use Radio Buttons and auto-populate a Combo Box/Dropdown Box

Beginning with this example, we’ll start by combining some of the above approaches and work towards making a more useful tool, a GUI that wraps around making a new user and makes it a bit easier to set an account expiration date. We’ll use this tool to wrap the New-ADUser Cmdlet, so we should first check the requirements for that command.

We’ll need to define the user’s Given (first name), their surName (last name), account name and PW.

For the components we’ll use:

• Checkbox - click the checkbox to specify the user is a temp and should expire
• ComboBox - a drop-down box filled with acceptable places for a new user to be placed
• Radio buttons - use the radio buttons to specify 7 days, 30 days, 90 days account life
• Textblock - we’ll use these as pretty labels for our tool

You can drag and drop them however you’d like, here’s what I came up with:

So, here we go. We’ve got a first name, last name, logon name and password textboxes. You’ll use those as you would, expect to use them. At first, we’ll be displaying the PW in plaintext but on the next revision, we’ll add the feature to display asterisks and require you to click to reveal the PW. Finally, we have two new classes here, the combo box and the radio button.

ComboBoxes are used to provide a user history (similar to auto-complete in your web browser of choice) or to constrict the user to only certain options. We’ll use the ComboBox to provide three or four places where a contractor can go.

Radio Buttons are used to present the user with a number of preset options, and allow them to only select one of them at a time (usually, there is a weird thing called a tri-state radio button, which means you can select two, but those are uniformly hated and loathed by users and devs alike, and should be killed with fire and/or the delete key).

Let’s code these up!

I wrote a few chunks of code here. First, when the user clicks the checkbox to enable a limited timespan user, I needed to add some logic to enable the radio buttons and pick one of them, which you see here. This is done by adding a script block to the Checkbox using the Add_Checked and Add_Unchecked methods:

 #Add logic to the checkbox to enable items when checked
$WPFcheckBox.Add_Checked({
    $WPFradioButton_7.IsEnabled=$true
   $WPFradioButton_30.IsEnabled=$true
   $WPFradioButton_90.IsEnabled=$true
    $WPFradioButton_7.IsChecked=$true
    })
#when this box is unchecked, make sure that none of the option bubbles are selected
$WPFcheckBox.Add_UnChecked({
    $WPFradioButton_7.IsEnabled=$false
   $WPFradioButton_30.IsEnabled=$false
   $WPFradioButton_90.IsEnabled=$false
    $WPFradioButton_7.IsChecked,$WPFradioButton_30.IsChecked,$WPFradioButton_90.IsChecked=$false,$false,$false})

Next, we need to link the Create User button up to the code to make a new user. Because the user may or may not be set to expire, I wanted a method to easily end up with an object called $Hash that contains the needed settings to make a new user account. I ended up writing a helper function called Get-FormField which will gather all of the settings the user specifies into the form, which is then used later on when you click the ‘Create User’ button like so:

$WPFMakeUserbutton.Add\_Click({ #Resolve Form Settings $hash = Get-FormFields New-ADUser @hash -PassThru $Form.Close()}) 

Finally,  populating the combo box, it’s actually super easy. The combo box name in this example is targetOu_ComboBox, which ends up becoming the PowerShell object $WPFtargetOU_ComboBox. We call its AddChild method to add entries to the list. I ran a quick LDAP query (thanks to this post on SuperUser for showing me the way!) to get the default OU for a new user and stored that in $defaultOU, and then manually typed in the Distinguished Name of the other OU I wanted to provide as an option.

$defaultOU = (get-adobject -filter 'ObjectClass -eq "domain"' -Properties wellKnownObjects).wellknownobjects.Split("\`n")\[-1\].Split(':') | select -Last 1

$defaultOU,"OU=Contractors,DC=FOXDEPLOY,DC=local" | ForEach-object {$WPFtargetOU\_comboBox.AddChild($\_)} 

This results in both names pre-populating our dropdown box, like so:

Just use $WPFCombo.AddChild() to add more items to the dropdown

The radio buttons are used to pick 7, 30 or 90 days as the expiration date for this account. We first check to see if the Checkbox for temporary user account is checked, and if so, we then check to see which bubble/radio button is checked. We then reset $Expiration date to equal get-date.AddDays($expirationDate) and pass that along too, using Get-FormFields, this is done in lines 7-10 below.

For the full source, click here!

Let’s use my favorite test-user, I like Ham.

And in testing this in my environment…it works!

I titled this picture ‘The Expiration of Ham’, it cracks me up

What’s next?

I’d planned to include building a tabbed interface, making a progress bar and finally building an all-in-one management tool using PowerShell in this post, but I’ll be saving those now for part IV of the series, as my fingers are tired and me no-wanto-writey anymore! Until then, please let me know here, on e-mail, or on Twitter if there are any other GUI features you’d like to see me outline!

Part IV - Creating a Tabbed Interface and handling events

Quick How-To: Add an image to your Raspberry Pi Windows App

This is part of the Learning Raspberry Pi Series here on FoxDeploy.com.

Click the banner for more Raspberry Pi and Windows!

One of the first things you’ll want to do when you make a GUI to push out to your Raspberry Pi 2 with Windows 10 is to make a fancy smancy GUI. To do that, you’ll need an image!

Assuming you’ve followed the guide here to make your first HelloWorld app, you might want to add an image. This will be your first image embedded in a functional app, so you’d better make it a good one!

For me, the pursuit of a fine image is half of the fun. Most of the fun! I like to Google around for the best image, that perfect piece of clipart which accurately describes my project, inspires my end user and aligns our paradigms…and then discard it and pick a picture of a Fox or a Sky Bison (my wife and I are really enjoying Avatar the Last Airbender now!)

Now that I’ve got a folder of some high quality jpegs ready

Using the toolbox image control, you can draw the outline for an image to put it wherever you’d like and then you’ll get a…uh…

Wait, it’s an X, what gives?

Previously, we were using PowerShell implementing .net classes to draw WPF forms, meaning we could put together a GUI in real time using bits and pieces from all over our system, including files stored in relative paths.

Since we’re not dealing with the same sorts of apps we worked with before, we can’t just point to outside files anymore. We’re talking about compiled code now; we’ve gotta up our game, and that means including assets.

Give me the short answer

Fine, I’ll save you a ton of words here. If you want to include an image in your program, you’ll have to embed it as an asset. These things get embedded in your .exe/code when you compile and are the one true way to deliver resources within your code. It is possible to download your image when the tool runs…which is something I’ll cover later.

To embed an image, follow these instructions/gifs

Open Solution Explorer and click on the Assets Folder. Now, right click->Add->Add Existing Item.

Pick your file.

Now click your image placeholder again and check out the dropdown box.

Success! Our image was included!

You’re now on your way to building beautiful and functional Windows 10 Raspberry Pi apps, like this one:

Uh…that doesn’t look very functional Stephen…

Super-Fast walkthrough: running Win10 Preview on Raspberry Pi 2 and what's it like

This is part of the Learning Raspberry Pi Series here on FoxDeploy.com. Click the banner for more Raspberry Pi and Windows!

If you’re like me, you got really excited to hear about the possibilities of running Windows 10 IoT preview on your Raspberry Pi 2.  I actually bought one just for a blog series on PowerShell and Raspberry Pi, so stay tuned for more!  Note: I did all of this while drinking some brewskies the other night.  If I can do it mildly intoxicated, then you can definitely do it sober.

What you’ll need

• Laptop / Desktop running Windows 10 Preview, can’t be a VM as you’ll need hardware access
• RaspBerry Pi 2:
  • Base model
  • Fancy Smancy kit - I bought this one.  You’ll really want to put a heat sink on the CPU and GPU, this thing gets super hot.  This kit includes it.
• 8 GB or higher Class 10 Micro SD Card.  Don’t buy an off-brand or you’re begging for pain!
• Sign-up for the Windows Connect Program here and click through all of the EULAs to enable the download tab.  Download the .zip file and unzip it.
• Optional : SD Card reader if you don’t have one

How to get it up and running

1. Download the .ffu file listed above.

2. Go to your Win 10 preview machine, use DiskPart to figure out which disk your SD Card is.  This will likely be the smallest disk when you run diskpart - List Disk .  Grab the disk number.

   Whoa Stephen, 64 GB, you must be a baller. That’s right, I make literally upwards of $8 an hour.

3. Change into the directory where you put your .ffu file

4. Run this cmd

   dism.exe /Apply-Image /ImageFile:flash.ffu /ApplyDrive:\\\\.\\PhysicalDriveN /SkipPlatformCheck

5. When you see 100% you’re done!  Put the SD Card in your Raspberry Pi 2 and boot her up.

What’s it like?

Plug in, connect network and boot.  Done.  It takes forever to boot, like five mins.  You’ll first see a random Blue debugging screen with some clickable elements that don’t actually work.

You can click these on the left, ‘App’ and ‘MiraCast/View’ but they don’t actually do anything

You can ignore that, and then the system will reboot, showing you the cool new logo of Windows 10 IoT.

Man, FoxDeploy, this is a terrible screen shot. Were you drunk taking a picture of your TV? Uh…yes. Yes I was.

Eventually you’ll end up on a page like this, showing you the IP to manage this bad boy.

There is a program you can also find in the .zip from earlier, which runs only on Windows 10 PCs.  It looks like this.

You can right-click items here to jump into a network Share, or open a Web browser.

You can open that IP in your browser for a very useful web management tool.

 You can also check process performance, which shows you a very sexy looking performance graph viewer

How’d you put load on the Pi? By launching a PowerShell session.

Remote PowerShell works, just add the PC to your trustedHosts like using the WSman Cmdlets, and if you’re remoting from Win10, disable the PS ReadLine module (it will cause errors).  For more info, follow the guide here.

Remoting performance to the Reaspberry Pi is very, very slow.  VERY slow.  But it’s a work in progress.

My transcript of how I connected:

set-Item WSMan:\\localhost\\Client\\TrustedHosts 10.63.30.54

WinRM Security Configuration. This command modifies the TrustedHosts list for the WinRM client. The computers in the TrustedHosts list might not be authenticated. The client might send credential information to these computers. Are you sure that you want to modify this list? \[Y\] Yes \[N\] No \[S\] Suspend \[?\] Help (default is "Y"): y 

PS C:\\WINDOWS\\system32> Enter-PSSession -ComputerName 10.63.30.54 -Credential 10.63.30.54\\Administrator \[10.63.30.54\]: PS C:\\Users\\Administrator\\Documents> 

Digging into the covers, you’ll see some weirdness…like no MSI class or Win32_Product classes :(

What’s next?

Well, from here on in, we’ll try to find some cool stuff on the Raspberry Pi.  My next to-do’s include finding temperature sensors, if they exist, and finding some other cool stuff we can run on the Pi from remote PowerShell.

Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi - Solving DISM 'the Drive can't find the sector requested'

This is part of the Learning Raspberry Pi Series here on FoxDeploy.com. Click the banner for more Raspberry Pi and Windows!

Symptom

You’re like me, and super excited to start playing with Windows 10 for the Internet of Things (IoT) on your Rasperry Pi 2.  But when running the DISM commands from this post, you see the following error:

The drive cannot find the sector requested

Reason

This is sort of a very opaque error, and in this case, double-check that you’re using a big enough SD card.  As it turns out, I accidentally picked up a 4 GB card, which is too small!  I think the specific cause of this error comes from the fact that the image in question won’t actually fit on a card smaller than 8 GB, and thus the Deployment Image Servicing Management tool craps out trying to write to that sector.

Solution

Buy a bigger SD Card!  Here’s one which will work perfectly!  When you’re buying a Micro SD card, don’t cheap out.  The quality matters and the class (the bin rate) of the card definitely matters.  Smaller cards are virtually identical to the larger capacity SD cards and the only difference is physical imperfections in the card, which can mean an earlier fail rate and other problems.