47 replies to this topic

[sweddle]

OK I have been having fun with my lil Netduino happily hacking away in VS 2010 and C# woohoo! with my Arduino off to the side like an old pair of shoes, some good shoes they where but time to move on to the new better easy way of coding; The Netduino!

One nice thing was Serial.read an easy to use way of communicating from the PC to microcontroller via the already connected built right in USB port (just like the Netduino built right in and providing power)... It was easy to make apps in VB.net and C# to control the Arduino and items attached to it..

Ummm am I missing something??? is there no netduino Serial.read in C# for the Netduino that will allow it to take commands via the (already connected, providing power and code load) USB port??? I so hope I'm missing something and the post I see about HID USB, no dice working on it and you got to hook up ANOTHER connection via a USB FTDI cable to Pin X and X.... Oh pleas tell me im missing something, Perhaps like; Debug.Read or Debug.Get USB.Read? another other then yet a 2nd set of wires from the same PC and a FTDI chip/part

LOL... if I need to use an FTDI to do USB to Serial guess I could allays use my Arduino to do the conversion/connection it has FTDI built in.

Hoping I'm missing something, thanks.
Shane

[Chris Walker]

Hi sweddle,

We're working on some USB communication options, but for now you'll want to use one of the 2 UARTs and a USB-to-UART cable (or use your Arduino as a USB-to-UART converter as you mentioned).

By default, the .NET Micro Framework uses the USB communication channel for deployment/debugging instead...

Chris

[sweddle]

working on some USB communication options

Sweeet! I look forward to see how it works, Thanks!
Shane

[Yves]

Hi Chris,

Do you have some kind of timeframe for the availability of the communication over USB? Just an estimate, nothing carved in stone of course

By the way I am new to netduino and I am really excited about this platform.

Thank you,

Yves

Hi sweddle,

We're working on some USB communication options, but for now you'll want to use one of the 2 UARTs and a USB-to-UART cable (or use your Arduino as a USB-to-UART converter as you mentioned).

By default, the .NET Micro Framework uses the USB communication channel for deployment/debugging instead...

Chris

[Chris Walker]

Do you have some kind of timeframe for the availability of the communication over USB? Just an estimate, nothing carved in stone of course

Hi Yves,

We've finished the code for the device and PC side, but we have two more pieces to go:
1. Tweaks to the Atmel USB code in the .NET MF to enable PC->device HID communciation
2. Code to enable multi channel communication from device to PC (speculative)

I don't have a timeframe, but it will take quite a bit of work to pull everything together. We're working on it, but it's second priority behind the v4.1.1 updates... I know that it will be a cool feature though...

Chris

[ajcg1973]

Hi Yves,

We've finished the code for the device and PC side, but we have two more pieces to go:
1. Tweaks to the Atmel USB code in the .NET MF to enable PC->device HID communciation
2. Code to enable multi channel communication from device to PC (speculative)

I don't have a timeframe, but it will take quite a bit of work to pull everything together. We're working on it, but it's second priority behind the v4.1.1 updates... I know that it will be a cool feature though...

Chris

Please don't wait for item #2 to finish before the release of item #1! I'm so anxious to use the Netduino as a Human Interface Device that I don't mind at all if I have to program/debug with the serial port.

[Yves]

Hi Yves,

We've finished the code for the device and PC side, but we have two more pieces to go:
1. Tweaks to the Atmel USB code in the .NET MF to enable PC->device HID communciation
2. Code to enable multi channel communication from device to PC (speculative)

I don't have a timeframe, but it will take quite a bit of work to pull everything together. We're working on it, but it's second priority behind the v4.1.1 updates... I know that it will be a cool feature though...

Chris

Hi Chris,

Thank you for your responsiveness and for keeping the community updated. I will keep watching this post for more information. Yes this would be a very cool and useful feature indeed!

Yves

[JammerX19]

Adding a bump for the serial feature. Just got my Netduino today and was a little disappointed in the lack of Serial comm. Looking forward to the update

[Snympi]

Another bump. All in good faith though. I suppose with the Netduino Plus the networking option could also be used for comms but serial via USB is still tops.

Got 3 Netduino's yesterday - completely sold on the idea

Pieter

[Chris Walker]

JammerX19, Snympi:

Welcome to the Netduino community!

There are three new pieces of code required to get bi-directional comm up and running over USB.

USB/serial deployment selection:
Completed (part of the new v4.1.0.5 firmware)

USB HID C# library for PC and Netduino:
Completed

UsbClient update to Atmel .NET MF C++ code:
In development (Secret Labs + Atmel + Microsoft + community)

So we're most of the way there...but one piece to go. Once v4.1.0.5 ships next week, we'll be doubling down to coordinate the necessary fixes to enable a few different PC<->Netduino communication scenarios.

Chris

[Yves]

JammerX19, Snympi:

Welcome to the Netduino community!

There are three new pieces of code required to get bi-directional comm up and running over USB.

USB/serial deployment selection:
Completed (part of the new v4.1.0.5 firmware)

USB HID C# library for PC and Netduino:
Completed

UsbClient update to Atmel .NET MF C++ code:
In development (Secret Labs + Atmel + Microsoft + community)

So we're most of the way there...but one piece to go. Once v4.1.0.5 ships next week, we'll be doubling down to coordinate the necessary fixes to enable a few different PC<->Netduino communication scenarios.

Chris

Chris,

This is great. Thank you for keeping us posted on this.

Yves

[darkside40]

Any news to this issue?

Would be interesting to combine the serial Values of the Netduino with a .Net App running on the PC.

[Chris Walker]

darkside40,

The last piece is the long haul piece. I'll post something when we have beta bits.

In the meantime, you can certainly use a serial shield and communicate with the PC via an RS232 cable...

Thank you for your enthusiasm,

Chris

[ZeroSkyX]

Any news on the topic?
I'm really dying to see that feature

Best regards
Simon

[Leonard]

Is this available yet? I really need to communicate to the Netduino and I'd like to use the existing USB connection.

[Jim]

Is there any news on this yet? I just ordered the Netduino and am looking forward to using it with a temperature sensor which would need to send back temperature information to the PC. I could order a USB FTDI cable but they are ~$20! I only paid $35 for the Netduino, why should I spend $20 on a cable to communicate with it. The other option is a RS-232 shield but they are ~$12.

It looks like you're pretty close to getting this request figured out, is there any time frame yet?

[Chris Walker]

We've made some progress on the final piece (UsbClient), but are still working on it. More as it develops...

Chris

[Jim]

Is there any news on this yet? I just ordered the Netduino and am looking forward to using it with a temperature sensor which would need to send back temperature information to the PC. I could order a USB FTDI cable but they are ~$20! I only paid $35 for the Netduino, why should I spend $20 on a cable to communicate with it. The other option is a RS-232 shield but they are ~$12.

It looks like you're pretty close to getting this request figured out, is there any time frame yet?

Great! Are we talking days/weeks/months here?

[Chris Walker]

Great! Are we talking days/weeks/months here?

Unfortunately, as it's a joint endeavor (Atmel+Microsoft+Secret Labs) I don't know 100% for sure. We're _really_ close...but it's that last 1-10% that seems to take forever.

Chris

[br549]

darkside40,
In the meantime, you can certainly use a serial shield and communicate with the PC via an RS232 cable...

I just recently purchased two netduino's. I got the netduino reading an LM335A temperature sensor and tried to read that data via a virtual com port into a windows app. I was surprised to find out the netduino doesn't show up as a virtual com port! Looking forward to using this functionality once you get it up and running.

Does anyone have a sample of using a RS232 shield or a 3.3V USB-to-TTL cable to do this?