Hi Cuno,
Chris, any news regarding your planned Gadgeteer shield for Netduino?
No news quite yet
We actually did a bunch of engineering on a SAM9G45-based open-source Gadgeteer mainboard. Basically, we offered to create a $99 open-source Gadgeteer mainboard, an open-source NETMF port for SAM9G45, and a bunch of open-source Gadgeteer accessories if MSR would open-source the Gadgeteer software. They worked hard on that and were able to open source the smaller core but unfortunately they didn't have the engineering resources to write all the Gadgeteer drivers.
So they felt that they needed to launch Gadgeteer with a closed-source partner. So we had to scrap a ridiculously awesome board.
In its current state, Gadgeteer is a promising project with some interesting limitations. The biggest struggle right now is that many accessories only work with specific boards...and some boards will only work with a small set of accessories. And many Gadgeteer accessories are manufacturer-specific, use closed-source code, and/or use (non-Microsoft) patented technologies which can't be open-sourced.
So we're looking at building a shield and a subset of components (basically, digital on/off and analog input-based components) to help promote the Gadgeteer concept. We keep running the numbers and haven't figured out how to do it yet without losing money on it...but we'd love to find a way to empower folks to use Gadgeteer-style plug accessories with Netduino. You can already do it today with TinkerKit, but it would be fun to add that bit of Gadgeteer software magic to the equation.
I'm also hoping that Microsoft Research gets enough kudos from the Gadgeteer 1.0 concept that they can finish out the code for a Gadgeteer 2.0. And if not, maybe someone will derive another open source project from Gadgeteer which makes accessories compatible across boards and creates a larger, compatible ecosystem.
It's a tough nut to crack, and I'm grateful for what the Gadgeteer team has made happen so far... I'll keep you all apprised when we make any more progress on this.
Chris