Win CE 6.0 and LabVIEW on Magellan GPS

[nyc_(is_out_of_here)]

I have an old Magellan  RoadMate GPS that has a Win CE 6.0 sticker on the back.

Would it be possible to run LabVIEW on it?

The only interface is a miniUSB port and the touchscreen.

[rolfk]

Possible: maybe

Easy: absolutely not

NI used to sell the LabVIEW for Mobile Module addon, which was specifically targeted at Windows CE devices. It allowed to add a Mobile Device target to a LabVIEW project much like you can do for their cRIO platforms and to build an executable that could be deployed to such a device. In the background it used the command line version of Microsoft Visual Studio to compile a CE compatible executable.

But the latest version this was supported in was LabVIEW 2011. And I don't think you can buy this module anymore and even if you could, they won't give you support on it anymore, since Windows CE is long discontinued by even Microsoft.

[nyc_(is_out_of_here)]

Ah. Thank you.

I was just on a telephone interview with a very small company, and they mentioned that they were developing LabVIEW to run on Windows CE which is what prompted the initial interest. 

I am having trouble updating the maps on the Magellan GPS, so I thought this may be a fun personal project.

What would suggest for this type of project in 2018?

This is all new to me.

[rolfk]

I think Visual Studio 2010 and the Windows CE 6.0 SDK. I would not try to invest any time in making something that lets you use LabVIEW to develop software on such a target. It's cumbersome, likely not going to work anyways, and of no real use. 

[nyc_(is_out_of_here)]

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@rolfk wrote:

I think Visual Studio 2010 and the Windows CE 6.0 SDK. I would not try to invest any time in making something that lets you use LabVIEW to develop software on such a target. It's cumbersome, likely not going to work anyways, and of no real use. 

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I was told that the target is Win CE 5 and that someone had developed a LabVIEW executable to run on the target but that it was not working quite right.

All new to me!

.

[rolfk · Accepted solution]

Well if you install LabVIEW 2011 SP1 and the Mobile Toolkit you can create executables in LabVIEW to run on a Windows CE target. But the Module was discontinued after LabVIEW 2011 and won't run in a newer LabVIEW version at all. And it had several problems to create valid executables when you used certain LabVIEW functions. Unfortunately the module was never used much and therefore did not receive a lot of love from LabVIEW developers to iron out all bugs.

It's possible to create such executables with the 2011 SP version but cumbersome and you have to find out by trial and error what LabVIEW functionality will work and what will cause trouble.

That may be ok for a hobby project but definitely is not working for professional use. And with Windows CE being discontinued there is certainly nobody going to invest any dollar into improving such a module now!

[wiebe@CARYA]

And apart from getting the code running on WinCE, you have to actually make the code. That alone might take months, if not years, even if you'd only needed to run it on a PC.

You can probably buy 50-500 new GPS receivers if you spend your time on 'normal' work. Not saying that I wouldn't be tempted to give it a try... Hacking can be fun.