1 reply to this topic

[Herbrandson]

Hello All, I've just purchased my first Netduino board and am really excited to try my hand at electronics. I'm attempting to build my own electronic drum kit using the Netduino as the communication between some homemade drum pads (using piezos) and a software "drum brain" running on my PC and/or Mac. My question is, what is the best way to push the information to the PC? I've done quite a bit of reading and understand that the on-board USB is being used for Visual Studio debugging and is therefor not available be default for this operation. One option is obviously to use a USB-to-Serial break out. The problems with this are (if I understand correctly).. 1. I have to buy another component (seems to be around $15, so not too big of a deal) 2. It doesn't seem that I can use this component to power the Netduino, which means I either need 2 USB connections (one for power and one for data) or a separate power cord. Both of those options seem really unfortunate. Another option would be to do the communication via an Ethernet port, but this seems like it has potential for more latency (not good for a drum machine) and also has the same issue of requiring two cables to run (one for Ethernet and one for power). I've also read that it's possible to deploy/debug over a Serial port and then use the on-board USB to talk to the PC. However, if I'm reading this post correctly (http://forums.netdui...tion-using-usb/) you are no longer able to use the on-board USB for power when running in this configuration. Is that correct? So I guess the short version of the question is... is it possible to push data to the PC and also power the Netduino using only one connection/cable?

[hanzibal]

Hello, it is absolutely possible to both do communication and power the Netduino using a single cable. I do this all the time using a classic FTDI USB to serial 3.3V TTL cable. This cable also supplies 5V which can be used to power the Netduino:
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9717

It is also possible to have both the FTDI cable and onboard USB connected at once but then make sure not to connect the 5V power line from the FTDI cable (i.e. only TX and RX) since the Netduino already gets power (and the same ground) from onboard USB in this case.

EDIT: I mostly use the mini and just realized that regular Netuino requires 7.5 - 12V power. However, I think you should be able to connect the FTDI cable 5V line to the 5V pin of the on-board USB. For this you could make a dummy USB mini connector only carrying the 5V bus power and ground from the FTDI cable.

Maybe someone could confirm the latter?