AC MAINS- it's about 30 years, here in Italy, that in any house/office it must be installed a safety switch. In US that's not mandatory? Basically it is a switch (normally closed), that opens as soon the difference of current between the hot and the neutral are above 30mA. This would be the typical situation when you touch accidentally the hot wire, but all the current flowing through your body is going toward ground. That makes the switch opens.
It works very well, and you almost don't feel anything: too fast to feel the shock.

Cheers

Mario,
We have much the same regulation here, except it doesn't apply to all outlets. Outlets in a wet location (WC/bathroom, kitchen) and exterior are required to be GFCI (the technical name for the "safety switch" you mentioned), or protected by an upstream GFCI or GFCI breaker.

On the one hand they are nice to keep you from frying yourself, on the other hand they can be a complete pain in the butt. I have to replace the exterior outlet I plug my car into in the winter once every year or so because it goes "soft" due to the draw of the block heater on my car.

-dan

With a netduino classic or plus you need a TTL to RS232 converter. I used two successfully:
http://wiki.netduino...hifter-SMD.ashx
http://wiki.netduino...-to-Serial.ashx

perhaps this thread could help you with code:
http://forums.netdui...rt-code-review/

You can also wire up a USB->Serial adapter directly to the serial pins on the Netduino. But be very careful. Some USB->Serial adapters output 12v and that will cook your Netduino (unless you use a level shifter). The USB->Serial adapter I have happens to put out TTL levels.

-dan

I am working on a circuit that will be able to drive a 115VAC half wave vibratory feeder using the Netduino. I attached the circuit diagram to the post.

As I am not realy experienced in this I was wonding if someone would be able to have a look at the circuit I designed and provide feedback to ensure that the circuit is sound. I really do not feel like killing my Netduino (or myself) by connecting to mains... I know that I lack fuses in the design as well as values for components, I will calculate those later.

Any help with this is much appreciated.

Regards

From your schematic it looks like you are using an optoisolator to then switch some stuff to then turn on the mains. Is that correct? If thats the case, you should look at the Arduino relay circuit.

-dan

Is there a way to determine the max data rate of the serial port? Can I even achieve that rate in managed code? Does blinking the onboard LED have any impact of performance?

Thanks!
-Arian

Depending on what you need to do, search the forums for "SimpleNGen" Corey Kosak has done some work to convert C# into native code which gives a pretty substantial performance improvement.

-dan

Hi,

I am working with the rf modules. I have two netduino boards to whome i want to connect the receiver and a tramsmitter. Now i need the possible circuit design and the code for sending the numbers from 1 to 100 using the c#

Can any one help me out with this ??

If you want one Netduino/Arduino/PC to just be a receiver, and one Netduino/Arduino/PC to just be a transmitter, then WRL-10535 RF Link Transmitter - 315MHz and WRL-10533 RF Link Receiver - 4800bps (315MHz) would do the trick. They are US $3.95 and US $4.95 respectively.

Keep in mind that each module *only* does one direction. If you need bi-directional, you would need to either go XBee, or equip each unit with a 315MHz and 434MHz unit (one in send, one in receive).

-dan