energywave

Hi Chris, sorry if I reply late but I'm working hard these days...

I'm the programmer here so I've asked to our electronic experts if they have thoughts. Here what would be useful for us (that are our thoughts, I completely understand that it's likely you have a different vision...) :

• RTC chip / lithium battery arrangement with base / PCB wirings so that the cost of the Netduino remains nearly the same but who wants can put in the chip and the battery and they have a board with RTC without the effort / cost to add a shield using i2c
• The same as above for a watchdog chip (like this ) or the implementation of the internal watchdog so that if the program completely hangs we can automatically reset the board. This is particularly of my interest, I'm very worried to leave the boards in the wild without a reliable auto reset (I've implemented a software watchdog but we can't count so much on it...)
• A way of using some bytes of flash (referred as "simple storage" elsewhere in this forum) so that we can permanently store a configuration. Something like 32 byte are ok for my needs but maybe if we can configure how much to use...
• The possibility to communicate using serial over USB without drivers as the Arduino can do (keyboard emulation would also be of interest...). This would be FANTASTIC for us. We are actually attaching one N2 to every panel PC via RS232 to handle I/O like electrolock, buttons, door sensors but even industrial equipments. We are buying RS232 interface from 3.3V and using a panel pc  usb to power N2 and an RS232 to communicate. If we could communicate through USB we could completely remove RS232, choosing a cheaper Panel PC (without serial ports) and no more need to have an RS232 interface.

About the frying of the boards... well, Chris you can't protect 3.3V, no need for that. We have to deal with an electronic board, it's our responsability to take care of it.   If we fry... our fault.

What do you think about those suggestions?

Hello to all,

Some lines to present myself:

I'm new to netduino but I'm an experienced full .net and Compact Framework developer from Italy, used to work with API from .net (so using much "low level" programming, if we may call "low level" something inside .net code  )

I've developed my first, production program for netduino 2, updated with 4.3.1 firmware using 4.3 QFE2 MF SDK.

Very flawless experience, I could get it done in a workday!

My program is a digital I/O remoter: I'll connect netduino 2 to a Panel PC's RS232 (using netduino COM4, to not eat two digital I/O) and I'll read and write I/O from the panel PC, using a simple and documented protocol I've created (in the same workday).

I've even created a watchdog thread on my netduino program that will reset device if the main thread is locked (not the perfect solution but as we can't use the real watchdog it's better than nothing)

All is managed with interrupts and spontaneous sends on RS232 so that from the panel pc software I don't have to poll for input pin changes.

This is working VERY NICELY, and I'm astonished I could do it in a workday!

Now to the point:

using Visual Studio I can deploy without problems, press F5 and there we are. Now I have to pass the software to our company people that will prepare 20 netduino2 for a customer, so I was guessing to use MFDeploy for that. I've correctly created the .hex file so to pass the hex file to the people who will prepare the boards, they'll have only to deploy the .hex file to the 20 netduino2.

But I cannoy get MFDeploy to deploy anything! I correctly see netduino, I can ping it (reply is from TinyCLR) but pressing the Deploy button an error stating "Error: No response from device" is shown.
(see attached screenshot)

Furthermore, as soon as the error message is shown, my program on netduino stops working (I'm flashing the led every 2 seconds and after the message no more flashing  )

I'm I missing something? Should I deploy all 20 boards with Visual Studio "F5"...? Is there some incompatibilities with 4.3.1 firmware? Please help me...

EDIT: Using MFDeploy from 4.2 SDK I'll go a step further but then MFDeploy is complaining about .sig file. Please check attached file:

EDIT 2: Searching and searching anywhere about it I've found an old Chris reply about ignoring signature chack failing, unplug and replug the device that it should work ok. I did it and... that's true!

RESUME TO GET A WORKING SOLUTION:

If you have 4.3.1 firmware on the N2 and 4.3.x SDK installed MFDeploy will not work. You have to install MFDeploy from 4.2 SDK (personally I've installed the old SDK on a colleague PC to not mess my SDK and copied only the folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft .NET Micro Framework\v4.2\Tools (C:\Program Files\Microsoft .NET Micro Framework\v4.2\Tools on 32bit machines) from the PC where I've installed the 4.2 SDK to mine. You'll find that folder as already existant, that's ok but don't overwrite existing files.

Now you have MFDeploy 4.3 in the 4.3\Tools folder and MFDeploy 4.2 in the 4.2\Tools folder. Use 4.2 MFDeploy to create and deploy the .hex file and when it's complaining about .sig file just ignore the message, in reality all was correctly done. Just unplug the device (to turn it off) and replug it. Your program will start.

Thank you in advance,

Henrik Sozzi