Padarn is a very small-footprint ASP.NET web server designed to run under Windows CE 5.0 and 6.0.  Padarn provides a subset of the Microsoft's ASP.NET which allows OEMs to leverage existing ASP.NET code and ASP.NET developer resources to get their embedded product to market faster.  Using Padarn also helps facilitate sharing code bases across platforms.

Padarn can be used to create web-based front ends for almost any embedded system.  From test and measurement devices and networking appliances to telematics and industrial automation, if your device has network connectivity, you can leverage Padarn to create a front end that any browser on any platform can reach.  

Padarn web pages have full access to device resources, so they can inspect and affect hardware, they can use databases or write files or just about anything that any other application can do, but they have the advantage of being accessible from any browser on the network.  If you have a device that you would like to remotely configure, update, query data from or reports on then Padarn is the solution for you.

Windows CE is an embedded OS, not a server OS, so Padarn was developed for the same markets.  Padarn is not designed, and will not work, for things like enterprise web servers, e-commerce site hosting, or any other type of usage that will have a large volume of clients attached at once.

Up until now, developers creating web-based interfaces for Windows CE devices had two options: creating an ASP 3.0 web page or creating an ISAPI filter.  Both are very challenging to debug since you cannot attach the Visual Studio debugger to the server, making development frustrating, time-consuming, and very expensive. 

Padarn, on the other hand, is a managed assembly that you add as a reference to a smart device project and you get the full, rich debugging capabilities of Visual Studio 2005.  You can set break points, step through code and use all of the other debugging tools that developers have come to rely on.

Our Padarn Developers Guide walk through setting up a solution to allow easy debugging.  Padarn ships with full source code and project files for a sample web site that can be used as a template for setting up your own web solutions.