8 replies to this topic

[Chris Walker]

Thank you for Frank Zhao for hacking the firmware on his Netduino and building out support for NeoPixels. Very cool.

Overview
"Good news for Netduino users who have been eyeing the glamorous NeoPixels strips and shapes in the Adafruit shop! We have managed to get NeoPixels working on the Netduino Plus 2 (shown below with a NeoPixel 8x8)"
Using NeoPixels with Netduino Plus 2 (learn.adafruit.com)



Chris

[Spoon]

I saw this blog post last night but haven't had a chance to check out the details.  Exciting!

 

[Dr Who]

Hello!

Is this just for the NP2 device or the NP1 or what? All I have here is the Netduino and the Mini. The author says the things are available from Github which is a good thing, but what devices are the target? And that means specific ones.

[Chris Walker]

Hi Dr. Who, The article addresses Netduino Plus 2 specifically. You may be able to adapt it to Netduino gen 1 boards, but it's a native code hack so it may or may not be easily portable. Chris

[Dr Who]

Then that is the problem. I believe I can scare up the tools to rebuild the firmware both of my gen one devices, but at this point I'm facing a sign in a cave.

 

This does not explain why there are three individuals staring at the firm's address.

[Mark Anderson]

Would like to use these, but modifying firmware puts me off. How easy is it and what are the implications (upgrades, etc.)

[Chris Walker]

Hi Mark,

Would like to use these, but modifying firmware puts me off. How easy is it and what are the implications (upgrades, etc.)

Netduino is designed for learning, so you can put your own firmware on there and switch back to the official firmware anytime. Just run Netduino Update and "upgrade" your board and you'll be back to the latest production firmware. If you're familiar with C and command-line C compilers, it can be a fun adventure. Chris

[Nils]

As I didn't want to flash the firmware too, I've played around with some code and came up with a tiny solution based on SPI.

 

The idea behind it is that the MOSI pin might be fast enough for the needed timings. Actually others have successfully tried this with other microcontrollers before, so I "just" ported the approach to C# for a Netduino Plus 2.

 

The code is up on github: https://github.com/j...etMFNeoPixelSPI

 

Disclaimer: I'm not sure if this is a "valid" approach, and the code is not perfect, but it worked for me, at least for two NeoPixel modules (as I don't have a full LED stripe, so maybe someone might test it).

 

[curt c]

Thank you Nils!

And for any other newbie (like me) that comes across this, the MOSI pin is 11 (the pin you connect to the data input on the neopixel). I saw that the NeoPixelSPI constructor took a pin as a parameter (Pins.GPIO_PIN_D10) and assumed that was the data pin.