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What's New In Sensors

This topic summarizes the new features and improvements for Sensors in Windows 8.

Support for HID Devices

Windows 8 includes in-box support for any sensor that runs on the HID transport. This support is provided by a new HID class driver.

The class driver supports the sixteen categories of sensors in the following list:

Accelerometer
Ambient Light
Atmospheric Pressure
Compass
Device Orientation
Electrical Current
Distance
Frequency
Gyrometer
Humidity
Inclinometer
Potentiometer
Power
Presence
Switches
Thermometer
Voltage

In addition to these sixteen categories, the HID class driver supports a custom and a generic class that a device vendor can use to support sensors not found in the sixteen listed categories. You should use the generic class to support a sensor type published in sensors.h but not supported by the class driver. You should use the custom class to support a sensor type that is not published in sensors.h.

Testing sensor functionality with the Sensor Diagnostic Tool

You can use the Sensor Diagnostic Tool to test your sensor driver, firmware, and hardware. This tool is described in The Sensor Diagnostic Tool topic.

Sensor driver logic

The new programming guide includes a section that describes driver logic for a sensor device driver. This logic is presented as pseudo code that covers: driver initialization, driver interface, driver updates, device updates, and internal driver methods. You'll find this new section beginning with the Sensor driver logic topic.

Sensors Geolocation Driver Sample

The geolocation sample driver demonstrates a minimal UMDF driver that emulates a Global Positioning System (GPS) device. This sample driver is described in detail in the new Programming Guide.

The geolocation sample driver also includes code that demonstrates adding support for the Radio Management API. This is described in the Supporting radio managment topic.

Sensors HID Driver Sample