Microsoft.Smartdevice.Connectivity and Windows Phone 8, launch native apps, send input? - windows-phone-8

Question

I've written a small .NET Console program that will launch the Windows 8 Simulator. Very straightforward:
using Microsoft.SmartDevice.Connectivity;
using Microsoft.SmartDevice.Connectivity.Interface;
using Microsoft.SmartDevice.MultiTargeting.Connectivity;
MultiTargetingConnectivity connectivity = new MultiTargetingConnectivity(CultureInfo.CurrentUICulture.LCID);
var devices = connectivity.GetConnectableDevices();
ConnectableDevice connectableDevice = devices[2];
Console.WriteLine("Found Connectable Device \'" + connectableDevice.Name + "\' for Device id {" + connectableDevice.Id + "}.");
Pretty straightforward. However, what I want to do now is programmatically interact with the device. I know I can launch my own Apps by using iDevice.installApplication but what I really want to do is run a built-in app that comes with the simulator (the mail app). Can I use the SmartDevice.Connectivity libs to send touches, or launch 'hidden' apps that don't show up in the GetInstalledApplications() method? the API is sparse, and doesn't seem like a ton of developers are using this.

Answer 1

I've actually found a better framework than the SmartDevice framework. Inside the C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft XDE\8.0 folder you can find the Microsoft.XDE DLLs, which help power the Windows 8 simulator wrapper/skin, and are managed libraries that allow you to interact with the simulator. Sample code:
private static void BootViaXdeLibs()
{
var factory = new Microsoft.Xde.Wmi.XdeWmiFactory();
Console.WriteLine("Polling for virtual machines");
var virtualMachine = factory.GetAllXdeVirtualMachines(SettingsOptions.None)[2];
Console.WriteLine("Found machine {0}", virtualMachine.Name);
if (virtualMachine.EnabledState != VirtualMachineEnabledState.Disabled)
{
Console.WriteLine("Virtual Machine {0} is already running. Shutting down. ", virtualMachine.Name);
virtualMachine.Stop();
while (virtualMachine.EnabledState != VirtualMachineEnabledState.Disabled)
{
Thread.Sleep(1000);
}
}
Console.WriteLine("Starting {0}", virtualMachine.Name);
virtualMachine.Start();
while (virtualMachine.EnabledState == VirtualMachineEnabledState.Starting)
{
Thread.Sleep(1000);
}
Console.WriteLine("Sleeping before image capture to give boot time");
Thread.Sleep(30000);
//Click on the screen
virtualMachine.SendMouseEvent(new MouseEventArgs(MouseButtons.Left, 1, 295, 260, 0));
Thread.Sleep(100);
virtualMachine.SendMouseEvent(new MouseEventArgs(MouseButtons.None, 0, 295, 260, 0));
Thread.Sleep(1000);
Console.WriteLine("Saving screenshot");
//Capture Screen
var res = virtualMachine.GetCurrentResolution();
var image = virtualMachine.GetScreenShot(0, 0, res.Width, res.Height);
image.Save("C:\\image.png", ImageFormat.Png);
virtualMachine.Stop();
}