Moving this discussion from the main forum. I think the bigest benefit for RepRap would be to use Netduino Plus. With network connection it could work just like a regular printer. And the SD card would be used as a print buffer, so one could send the whole print job, and turn off the computer (3D printers are still quite slow). Indeed this sounds as a very exciting thing to do. Hopefuly some people in Japan are already working on this (the shield was designed by Kenzo Yoshida).

Since .NET MF allows interop with native code, this is definitely possible using a mix of native C++ and managed C# code. Maybe managed C# code alone.

100% Native C++ code on the Netduino is definitely possible as well.

Chris,
It sounds very tempting to give it a try, and besides I wanted a MakerBot for some time alredy... but maybe I should finish some other projects first :-)

I'm pretty new at this, but am wondering whether this board could be used to run the Mendel REPRAP machine? I mean, would it simply be a case of recompiling the Java code they provide, or would it need to be re-written from scratch?

I just found that there is a new RepRap G5 Mini Shield posted on http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3863
It is specially designed to work with ARM boards, such like Netduino, FEZ domino, Maple Leaf and etc.
So I think that would take care of the hardware side.

On the software front I also found that the RepRap firmware is written so that it can be compiled by GNU GCC compiler:
http://reprap.org/wiki/General_FAQ

So I think instead of rewriting it in .NET Micro Framework, the easiest route would be to compile it natively and reflash the board. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of RepRap.NET too, but .NET MF is not designed for real-time devices so I'm afraid it wouldn't work in this scenario. But I still hope someone else will shortly prove I was wrong.

Do you know the part/model # or where I could buy one? It's nice!

It's just regular potentiomater that I got from a local hobby electronics store in my town.
Looks exactly like this one: http://www.oreind.co...products_id=859

I only put a platics knob on it :-)

What potentiometer are you using?

10K

Szymon

Waiting for that, will help me a lot

Thanks

segu

I have published the article on my blog: http://forums.netdui...-blinking-leds/

Now I will look into writing the driver for one-wire DS18B20 sensor.

Hi, I have published article on my blog that shows how to use shift registers to extend number of digital output pins on Netduino. In particular I demonstrate how to use it to control a 7-segment display or any other LED components. In two examples I show how to display values from potentiometer and SHT15 temperatuer & humidity sensor. Here is the blog post: http://geekswithblog...nking_leds.aspx I also made a short video to show how this works: You can download the source code here: http://cid-4c7ec0c21...s^_20100822.zip Please let me know if you like it or not, and if you would like to see more projects like this from me.

Thank you for visiting my weblog... ;-)

http://ecrafts.g.hat...e.jp/Lynx-EyED/

Hi lynxeyed_atsu,

Very cool that you are here too. It looks like lot of people in Japan are excited about netduino (or maybe with .NET Micro Framework in general?). Due to language barier it's hard for me to keep up with what you are doing. Hope you could give us some updates on cool project you are working on.

Wow. There is already a Netduino wiki in japanese: http://www.microsoft...%c8%a4%a4%ca%fd

I just saw this article; a Netduino user in Japan has written preliminary code using an OLED screen with a Netduino.

Very nice.

http://www.microsoft...x-EyED/20100821

Chris

Interesting. I've noticed that there is lot of chat on twitter about netduino in japanese. I wonder what they are up to ;-)

I change the jumper for Vref to the 5 V source. This did a find job of centering the signal, but the max values were very unstable. I guess I was over driving the A/D. So I cut the trace from 5 V to the joystick and added a wire from 3.3 to the joystick and Vref. Now every thing works just fine. See the attachment.

Thanks for sharing your findings.

Looks like the fact that Vref is not connected on Netduino causes troubles with some shields, and also is bit confusing for people comming from arduino. Maybe Chris could explain why it was done this way and if there is any technical difficulty to make it connected by default to 3V3 in future revisions.

Does anyone know what font is used for the 'netduino' trademark on the board? I am working on a custom part for Fritzing (preview attached), and that is the only thing I am missing.

Awesome! I'm glad that you took care of this.

I just finished drawing schematics for my tutorial, but I had to use arduino part and would love to replace it.

@segu & @dichotomousgal I'm working on my little tutorial right now, and it should be ready before weekend. I let you know here when it's published. Hope you like it :-)

Alright so I run a little home server that I can set-up a website in and My radio station so on...
Could I set it up as a 'middle man' [middle computer in this case ] so one Netduino can talk to the other using ethernet shields? I would love to set up a thing where you get a account # and password and it allows you to send info back and forth! FREE of course.

OMG 'Netduino IM' LOL how funny would that be!?!?!

I think what you are talking about is called Machine-to-Machine communication (M2M) http://en.wikipedia....hine-to-Machine

Incidently recently I came across an OS platform that can handle this called Mango M2M http://mango.serotoninsoftware.com/

Slightly different angle would be the notion of Sensor Web. One example would be the OGC Sensor Web Eneblement initiative http://www.opengeosp...echnologies/swe and example implementation is here http://52north.org/S...oxf/index.html. Another popular example is http://www.pachube.com/

I'm interested in these topics myself so please let us know if you make any progress with this.

Oh, thats right. I've seen it before but forgot about it. So I will just check how it works with netduino.

I tested Elze Kool's SHT11 class and it works great on netduino. It compiled and run without any modifications (besides pin assignments in initialization). So this clearly demonstrates the power of .NET MF code portability (he was using Embedded Master in his demo).

Btw. Elze uses interesting convention to separate input providers from the driver code. I assume he did it in case the sensor would be attached on a different type of bus. For example via an I2C extender chip. I'm curious if you use similar pattern in your code? Are there any other best practices for .NET Micro Framework programming?

Elze Kool has published Sensirion SHT11 classes (SHT1x series sensors differ only in precision).

Oh, thats right. I've seen it before but forgot about it. So I will just check how it works with netduino.

I for one would definitely be interested!

Chris,
First I want to finish a little tutorial on using shift registers (74HC595) to extend number of outputs of netduino. I'm using 7 segment LEDs as example (this is actually one of basic tutorials for arduino too). I have all code working so hopefully it will be ready this week. Then I can add the temperature sensor so together it could make a digital termometer with LED display.

On arduino I used these two temperature sensors:
DS18S20 One Wire Digital Temperature Sensor
SHT15 Humidity and Temperature Sensor

Both are very easy to use and produce good results. Last year I've built several wireless units that were measuring temperature, humidity and light level around the house. I put them in the repurposed AirWick Mini automatic refreshners (so I also got a motion sensor as bounus). Here are some photos: http://cid-4c7ec0c21...tal electronics

Anyway, if anyone here is interested I can look into converting the drivers for these sensors to .NET MF.

I received my frist Netduino that I ordered on August 4 from Proto Advantage and it was shiped next day via Air Mail from Canada. Arrived today so it took 2 weeks to get it to Poland. Thanks god we have European resellers now :-) Small box looks cool and I got the USB cable inside the envelope. Anyone can tell me what was the motivation to use micro USB instead of more common mini USB ? The board itself loosk little empty when you compare it to regular Arduino - I guess if you'd trim all the empty space you could put it on a board half that size (Netduino Nano parhaps?). But overall it looks great. Nice work guys!

I am thinking down the road as far as projects are concerned, but I was wondering if the Netduino can be programmed to transfer data to and from the Netduino running in a standalone mode to a PC. For Example, a button is pressed on the Netduino or an analog value is registered and it sends useable results to a program running on a PC - outside of the Visual.net framework.

Hi Greg,
Please see here for discussion of this topic http://forums.netdui...talking-to-wpf/

I have added both as product change proposals on community site: http://www.netmf.com...02-a0462ba8340c http://www.netmf.com...4e-7cf309a9f296

I have to agree with CW2 that exposing all registers my lead to unexpected errors. I was also thinking that it will be better to expose the wrapper for the timer/counter function alone. Very similar as we have managed wrappers for PWM and analog ports now. Maybe it should be Microsoft team responsibility to implement this in next release of .NET Micro Framework.

This should really be a firmware extension. If you have the knowledge to write the registers correctly then you can extend the firmware.

This is much simpler then the port of the CLR since all it really needs is a managed class for the .NET side with the stubs produced for the native functions.

All the nasty driver work and HAL/PAL work just isn't needed here. That just gets compiled in as a black box. As a reference point, how many people actually know how the c-runtime gets started up when they run a program they wrote in C?

The rest of the firmware just gets treated the same way, as kind of a c-runtime, for most people.

So perhaps what we really need is a simple sample that shows how to do this.

I'm afraid writing a native driver is still way out of my reach. I don't know that much about microcontrollers and was hoping that .NET MF will shield me from this ;-)

Sample showing where to begin with would be great!

PS: all about timers I learned here http://www.avrfreaks...ewtopic&t=50106

Hi,
I'm working on a project that will allow to control RGB LEDs using Netduino. I planned to use the TI TLC5940NT LED driver chip that has 16 channels with 12-bit PWM, and is quite popular with Arduino. Here are some resources for anyone interested:
Arduino library
Demystifying the TLC5940 ebook

I started writing the .NET MF driver for this chip with a reference implementation as described in the above ebook. However the pure managed code is too slow to drive chip's clock signals. So the next step is to use the hardware functions.

This chip uses SPI to receive the grayscale values from microcontroler, and moving this to hardware SPI was easy. However this chip also requires a clock signal for PWM outputs. Whats more the new SPI values should be latched preciesly at the end of each PWM cycle, that is every 4096 clock sygnals.

Now the Arduino library uses the hardware timer counter with interrupt to achieve this. Here is the corresponding code to set this (from the "Demystifying the TLC5940" ebook):

// CTC with OCR0A as TOP
TCCR0A = (1 << WGM01);
// clk_io/1024 (From prescaler)
TCCR0B = ((1 << CS02) | (1 << CS00));
// Generate an interrupt every 4096 clock cycles
OCR0A = 3;
// Enable Timer/Counter0 Compare Match A interrupt
TIMSK0 |= (1 << OCIE0A);

Would something similar be possible on Netduino? I admit I got stuck on this so all suggestions how to best convert this to .NET MF would be welcome :-)

OZ, it sounds like you'll have a very nice looking case whatever you do!

Szymon, Chris Seto--thanks for the links to the cases. Maybe we should ask one of the manufacturers to make a Netduino-specific case?

Chris

I think that in general you would choose the case that fits best for your project, considering all additional components that you might be using.

That said I think adafruit's case looks quite robust and can fit quite a lot. For larger or more ruged projects Chameleon case might work better http://www.esawdust....cl-cham1-basic/

For both enclosures we just need a proper faceplate to expose the netduino ports (or just a template to cut them ourselves from blank faceplate).

Here are few more examples:
http://blog.makezine..._enclosure.html
http://blog.makezine...duino_case.html
http://blog.makezine...duino_case.html
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1664