Sensor and Location

The Sensor and Location Platform is among the coolest and most useful new technologies offered in Windows 7, for both users and developers. The Windows 7 Sensor and Location Platform enables developers to create adaptive applications that can change the way the application looks and behaves according to different environmental conditions. You might wonder why even bother with this type of functionality, but take a quick look around you. You see mobile devices that change their display orientation based on the relative position of the device. More and more computers include an ambient light sensor that allows your computer to automatically adjust your screen's brightness based on the current lighting conditions, so when you use your computer in a dark environment, you don't have to strain your eyes.

Ambient light sensors also enable applications to optimize their content for readability, making your computer more useful and user friendly in a wider range of operating environments than ever before.

The Sensor and Location Platform provides a standard way to integrate sensor and location devices into Windows, as well as a standard programming interface for applications to take advantage of these devices. Lack of such functionality has been a long-standing problem, because previously Windows developers had to choose specific sensor hardware and sets of APIs to work with in their applications. Switching between different vendors was extremely expensive because of the lack of standardization. And with Windows 7, applications have a uniform, standard interface to use the sensors on data, and the user has control over how data from these sensors is exposed to applications.