I guess that depends on how you define client and server .

In my home automation system (just monitoring so far), the server is written in Java and runs on a Windows PC.  It monitors a collection of 1-wire sensors directly and it talks to a Netduino Plus (NP1) over ethernet that monitors my boiler, water header, and garage door (more to come).  The server configuration includes the IP address of the sensor client.  The server connects to the sensor client and asks for sensor data once per minute.  I plan to implement a locator protocol but haven't had time yet.  I have to admit that in this configuration the sensor client is really acting as a server ... but it all depends on how you look at it.

There are also user interface (UI) clients that connect to the server and subscribe to a data feed, which results in the client getting sensor data once per minute which it displays for the user (me).  I use some old laptops (one upstairs and one downstairs) as the UI clients, they make a great graphic display, and they were basically free.

I like to implement my own networking code, I've been thinking that I should try to come up with a simple system that could be easily extended for typical network sensors.  Maybe this fall I'll have time to do that.

Good luck, with your home automation.

John

I'm working on a similar issue right now.  If you're using Socket.Connect and the host does not respond that can also hang up the Netduino.  Check out http://forums.netdui...socket-connect/ if that sounds like a possibility in your situation.  The Netduino should not hang  .

--John

Btw, Visual Studio has a tool to convert Java to C#.  It takes care of a lot of the stupid stuff, and it works pretty good.  It doesn't convert GUI components though.

Yup.  That's how I do it.

If you look at the spec sheet http://www.netduino....plus2/specs.htm you'll see

that there are 4 serial ports.  "COM1" ... "COM4".  Since each pin has multiple functions but

can only do one at a time, it all depends on what functions you're using.  I suggest you start

with "COM1" and hook:

    NP2 Pin D0 (RX)  --->  RFID  J2  Pin3 (TX)

    NP2 Pin D1 (TX)  --->  RFID  J2  Pin2 (RX)

    Hook up Gnd and +5 on J1

And you should be ready to go.  You will have to translate the Arduino example to C#.  Here

are couple hints, more information is at http://arduino.cc/en...erence/HomePage :

     Arduino uses the Serial object to talk to the host computer.  Since they only have a single

     serial port (in hardware) they use the SoftwareSerial  class (mySerial) to talk to the device.

     So convert:

         Serial.println  --> Debug.Print

         mySerial.print  -->  m_SerialPort.Write

Of, course they're not one-for-one but we have to leave a little fun for you  .

Enjoy,

-- John

I haven't wired up my 20x2 display yet, but as near as I can tell your wiring looks good.  When I started with my 20x4 display I didn't get anything because I didn't know that I needed to hook up the contrast, it looks like you've got that covered.

Looking at your code it looks good too.  One thing that I do differently is to call Clear() and SetCursorPosition(0, 0) after the Begin() call.  It shouldn't matter since Begin() calls Clear() itself, but I can't see any other issues.

Check that all of your connections are good.  Maybe it's a bad display ... it happens.  Try hooking up the back light I'm using a 39 ohm resistor between pin15 and +5, pin16 to ground.

John

If you are going to talk to the web, it seems like a WiFi card would make more sense than a XBee card.  I'd start with wired Ethernet and once that was working I'd work on the WiFi.  Sounds like a cool application, keep us posted.

-- John

Erase your Netduino Plus 2 by applying 3V3 power to the square gold ERASE pad under the digital I/O pin 0 while the Netduino is powered up.

And if you did have Netduino Plus 1/2 ... the MAC address is printed on a label stuck to the back of the board.

I found that most of the examples are for 4.1 and earlier.  I finally found an example for 4.2 and it looked like this:

// This puts a continuous signal on D5 with a 1mS pulse every 3 mS.const uint period = 3; // *1000 * 1000;    // 3 msconst uint duration = 1; // *1000 * 1000;  // 1 msPWM pwm = new PWM(PWMChannels.PWM_PIN_D5, period, duration, PWM.ScaleFactor.Milliseconds, false);pwm.Period = period;pwm.Start();

Hope this helps,

John

Using enable/select lines is the normal to do multiple devices.  The .NET code will even manage them and synchronize them with the othe signals. Here are a couple links that might help:

http://wiki.netduino...figuration.ashx http://forums.netdui...-netduino-mini/

Enjoy.

Bernie,

The Netduino is not really fast enough to do this sort of thing in managed (C#) code.  And it's difficult to add unmanaged libraries and solve the problem that way.  In my opinion you have two choices:

1. The following fourm talks about a library for interfacing to the DHT-11 device which uses pulse width encoding of its digital data.  http://forums.netdui...managed-driver/ it uses interrupts to detect the edge of each pulse and compute the pulse width from the timestamp that comes with each interrupt.
2. Use an Arduino (there is probably code already out there) and interface it to the Netduino with rs-232, I2C, or SPI.

I'm working on the Arduino solution for interfacing some hardware to the Netduino right now.

John

HttpListener is under System.Net.  But, which System.Net would that be ... it's hard to figure out from Object Browser.

You need to add a reference to System.HTTP   :-).

John

It's hard to tell from the web site (nice site) what resources of the Arduino that they're using.  But it looks like a lot of Arduino code to support all of those sensors.  So you would have a lot of C code to convet to C#.  Could be fun  .  To determine what resources they're using you'll have to go through all of the Arduino C code.

I'm not sure why you want to use the Netduino i this case, but if I wanted to get this working quickly I would probably connect the Netduino to an Arduino with a serial port (UART) and create a set of Netduino functions that send a command over to the Arduino which would call the provided function and return the result to the Netduino over the serial link.  Then later I could replace that with a native Netduino implemetation.

John

I've got the EMIC2 (http://www.hobbytron...-text-to-speech) on my list, but I haven't got to it yet.  They have some amazing demo wave files.  And there is an Arduino demo program.  Let us know how it goes.