LatchPin ?

I see LatchPin referenced quite often here.  What is a latchPin?

Just purchased a N+2 and having a hard time getting start.  There seems to be a lack of information and sample programs for the N+2.  The N+2 product page should have more ND reference material, like the Arduino pages do... like:

1. Where is a detailed PIN guide?  

2. What function reference guide like: http://arduino.cc/en...erence/HomePage

3. Library reference guide like: http://arduino.cc/en...rence/Libraries

4. How do I know when and what LIBs to include?  Since I have a N+2, should I always include the SecretLabs.NETMF.Hardware.NetduinoPlus?

5. The NetDuino Wiki page is messy and not organized.

6. Most of the Tutorials, PDFs and books I have found on the ND focus more on electronics that the actual board, so not much help on understanding the board itself or the ND related SDKs.

Being a C# developer, I thought the NetDuino would be easier to program for then the Arduino.  Unfortunately, I am finding it very frustrating to work with and learn.  The N+2 board itself seem very polished, but finding out how to use it, not so much.

BTW... I have only been able to blink LEDs.  I have not been able to get any of the samples to work, mainly because they were are compile with v4.1 and not v4.2.

I'm fairly new to all of this as well, but I had neither programming or electrical basses to start from. I've learn't the most just by searching the forums to knock of one problem at a time. I also use the examples and lib from .net micro framework a lot. Just reading through the code examples from that library has how I've figured most stuff out. When i started i thought i'd get away with a lot of copy and pasting of code, but it's been the opposite. I've learned that nothing can be taken for granted in here, and the simpler it's sounds, the harder it hit's when you least expect it. I love it!! Really keeps you on your toes. There are some decent tutorials out there on a lot of other sites other than here as well. Embedded Lab, Mario's Site, and https://stefan.co/ are a just a few. Hope you can push through the initial learning and stick around. I've found this to be a very generous community most of the time.

Grant.

Latch pin.

http://www.electro-t...-is-that.89254/

Just as a follow up, this video shows you how a microcontroller actually controls a shift register (including the function of the latch pin). I found it very informative and it helped me a lot, so I thought I'd share:

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=6fVbJbNPrEU

As for a library reference, the Netduino uses the .NET Micro Framework so Microsoft maintains an excellent API reference for the framework. You can find the API reference for version 4.2 (the current stable release for Netduino) here:

http://msdn.microsof...y/hh401281.aspx

When figuring out which built-in libraries to include, the above reference is a great help since it organizes everything by namespace. For instance, if you wanted to use an ArrayList you can see in the above reference that ArrayList is part of the System.Collections namespace, so you would need to add:

using System.Collections;

Hope that helps!

Hey guys, thanks for the replies and great links.  I did finally figure out how to get a the Net Toolbox HD44780 to compile and run on the N+2, but it prints out "llo World" and not and not "Hello World"