Fabien Royer's Content

#35562 Shield Base Firmware v4.2.0.1 (beta 1)

Posted by Fabien Royer on 20 September 2012 - 01:47 AM in Netduino Go

Greg, Ken,

I wanted to let you know that the Nwazet DAQ module provides an I2C interface and it works with sensors anywhere from 10kHz to 400kHz.
This module only takes a single socket on the Go! main board and uses a 16 MHz SPI interface.

Cheers,
-Fabien.

#27129 Shield Base Availability

Posted by Fabien Royer on 13 April 2012 - 02:04 AM in Netduino Go

We have a few left in stock @ [nwazet

#30188 SetSocketPowerState

Posted by Fabien Royer on 04 June 2012 - 05:58 PM in Netduino Go

Hi Chris, I second Kevin's request: it's vital to be able to entirely reset a module at will by turning power on / off. Cheers. -Fabien.

#30971 Seattle Mini Maker Faire: [nwazet demos source code / designs

Posted by Fabien Royer on 20 June 2012 - 07:13 PM in Netduino Go

Hi,

We just updated our BitBucket repository with the source code of the demos and supporting drivers, libraries and designs that we showed at the Seattle Mini Maker Faire a few weeks ago, including:

’Nwazet image gallery’ demo reading images from a generic SD card
’Nwazet Touch Display module’ demo
’Temperature and fan control’ demo using the Nwazet relay and the Adafruit Max6675 thermocouple amp.
’RGB LED display Marquee’ demo
’RGB Pixel Art’ painting demo using the RGB LED display
’Capture the Dot’ game demo using Sharp IR distance sensors and the RGB LED display
’RGB LED display showcase’ demo

and the supporting bits:

Nwazet Adafruit Max6675 Thermocouple amplifier C# driver
Nwazet RGB LED Display driver for the Adafruit LPD8806
Nwazet Joystick module STM8S C driver
Nwazet Joystick module Eagle schematics / board layout
Nwazet Joystick module C# driver
Nwazet SerialLib message handler

We hope that you will find this code fun and useful in getting started building real applications with Netduino Go! today: with a little bit of creativity, it is easy to adapt a wide variety of existing hardware components for integration with Netduino Go!

No need to wait: just jump in and start building and integrating Posted Image

Cheers,
-Fabien & Bertrand.

Video walkthrough of the demos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78LesDVqMXs

Full post: http://fabienroyer.w...e-code-designs/

#36536 SD Card Module Update

Posted by Fabien Royer on 04 October 2012 - 04:49 PM in Netduino Go

Guys, You may not realize this, but taking pre-orders that remain in the pipeline for too long has a direct negative impact on our business and affects customer satisfaction: our customers generally buy other things along with the pre-ordered item(s). Once the pre-ordered item becomes available, the entire order ships. So, if the availability date of a pre-ordered item keeps being pushed back, with no foreseeable ETA, you can see how a large order backlog can build up quickly. In turn, our customers are unhappy because their hardware can't ship for weeks and we are unable to provide a specific ETA. Predictability and reliability are extremely important to us and we feel that we can't be successful without that. We made the decision to only carry products that are currently shipping and functional. Cheers, -Fabien.

#36103 SD Card Module Update

Posted by Fabien Royer on 28 September 2012 - 02:44 AM in Netduino Go

Hi Chris,
We're a couple days away from September 29th and we have not heard from you on the availability of the SL SD card reader.
Can you please provide us with an update?
Thanks,-Fabien.

#36193 SD Card Module Update

Posted by Fabien Royer on 28 September 2012 - 04:39 PM in Netduino Go

Hi Nicky,

and if Fabien, who I expect is the reseller at nwazet.com

We do resell Netduino Go! products and develop our own Netduino Go! modules.

doesn't know anything, it doesn't seem good...

As you noticed, the release dates announced by Secret Labs for the SD card and the Ethernet modules have been pushed back several times. Secret Labs communicated to us on Sept 4th that the SD card module would be available this month, by the 29th at the latest. My guess is that Secret Labs postponed the release of these modules until Maker Faire, along with a third 'mystery' module, to make as much noise as possible around Netduino Go!.

However, we expected to have the SD card reader module ready by the 29th in order to fulfill pre-orders and that's not the case. Unfortunately, we're getting ready to issue refunds to folks who have ordered the SL SD card reader orders tomorrow if it is not publicly released. We'll also remove the SD card reader from our store until it is actually available and functional.

I understand that you have a Shield Base already, but if you need SDHC storage, you should seriously consider our DAQ module: http://nwazet.com/da...uisition-module.

-Fabien.

#34181 SD Card Module Update

Posted by Fabien Royer on 25 August 2012 - 12:25 AM in Netduino Go

I would ping your favoite local reseller as soon as they're announced.

So you know, we're carrying Secret Labs' SD card module and we have it ready for pre-order: http://nwazet.com/gosd
Cheers,
-Fabien.

#36264 SD Card Module Update

Posted by Fabien Royer on 29 September 2012 - 05:50 PM in Netduino Go

Thanks for the explanation Chris. I just issued a refund this morning to everyone who had pre-ordered an SD card module.

Indeed, the DAQ provides a drop-in replacement for System.IO and you can see how it works here: http://nwazet.com/co...Q/10-FileSystem

Thanks,

Cheers,
-Fabien.

#29316 SD Card in Netduino Go

Posted by Fabien Royer on 17 May 2012 - 05:30 AM in Netduino Go

Hi Diego, SD card support is quite broken in .Net MF 4.2 RCx at the moment, especially SDHC support. There's no telling if a card will work or not, regardless of its capacity. -Fabien.

#33657 reset/reboot go

Posted by Fabien Royer on 15 August 2012 - 06:14 AM in Netduino Go

Hi, Here's an option: http://nwazet.com/power: flip the switch

Another option involves using a USB extension cable to alleviate the wear and tear on the micro USB socket. Another option is to solder the NRESET pin on the 'JTAG' header (small through-hole connector on the board) to the onboard switch, then soldering the switch to ground using a 10K resistor. A cheap and effective hack... -Fabien.

#26479 Redacted 00101100

Posted by Fabien Royer on 04 April 2012 - 10:07 PM in General Discussion

Hi Cuno,

I'm going to expand on what Bertrand wrote a bit and take your questions one by one

If I understand correctly, your touch display has its own microcontroller, between the display and the Netduino Go. Is the "SPI up to 40 MHz" between display and your microcontroller?

That's correct: the display has its own STM32F2, servicing commands from the application running on the GO! mainboard received / sent over SPI. In turn, the display module drives the actual LCD screen and handles the interactions with the touchscreen.

What exactly is the higher-level protocol on top of go!bus, between Netduino Go and your display module? Are the drawing primitives related to common .NET abstractions?

I wrote a generic lightweight message serialization / deserialization system for passing messages / objects (in network byte order) between a C# app and the C code (and vice-versa) interpreting the commands. The buffer containing the serialized messages is used by SPI directly.

Could your display be used from a Gadgeteer mainboard as well, let's say through an SUX socket?

Yes, it should work just fine.

Thanks and looking forward to seeing the display in natura!

Thanks,

Cheers,
-Fabien.

#29043 Prototype module prototyped on a prototype Protomodule

Posted by Fabien Royer on 14 May 2012 - 08:12 PM in Netduino Go

Dan, Arron,

Thanks for providing additional details.

To program the module today, yes you'd need a separate ST-Link device to connect to the SWIM port

That means adding another ~$20 to the $20 cost of the ProtoModule, way over the $8 cost of the STM8S.

If you wanted to route the connectors for the go bus socket and add the supporting capacitors onto a discovery board I'm sure you could come up with a suitable replacement

The detachable board on the STM8S has the necessary decoupling capacitors and features a 16 Mhz quartz for precision frequency counting / generation. Does the ProtoModule include a resonator or a quartz as well? For reference, here is the STM8S, detached from the STLink interface, with a Go! connector soldered to it:

Posted Image

As I'm sure your aware there are changes coming to the Go!Bus software spec

Can you please share a link to that Go!Bus software spec? I have yet to see it.

For the answer to that you'll have to talk to Chris.

I have asked Chris and did not get the answers I was seeking. It sounded like you had insights that I did not have.

The basic idea there, as far as I understand it, is that it will provide a virtualized interface to the I/Os, including the various higher level protocols such as SPI, UART or I2C. This firmware will suit the needs of most modules, allowing for every pin to be controlled directly by the Go

I've heard this before, starting with the Shield Base... and it sounds like these two solutions will be competing with each other.
It will be interesting to see how these features will fit and perform within the constrained resources available on the STM8...

Around that time, a project will be released which will allow users to flash the firmware on modules via the Go, this will remove the necessity to have an ST programmer, for the users who don't want to use (or can't) the generic firmware.

Flashing module firmware onto a module is one thing, programming / debugging one is another thing altogether that the Go! project to be released will definitely not address.

I'll be the first to admit that at this point in time that isn't true, that to use the protomodule effectively you need a programmer and you'll have to write your own firmware, for an undocumented protocol.

Thanks for clarifying.

Two things about this are true though; First, that is going to change with the addition on the generic firmware.

It isn't true until I can run actual bits Posted Image

Second, I expect all or at least most of the early adopters to be people who are looking to build modules or who are already building modules.

I believe that you're correct and as one of these people, I don't understand the value proposition at the moment.

Cheers,
-Fabien.

#28994 Prototype module prototyped on a prototype Protomodule

Posted by Fabien Royer on 14 May 2012 - 06:46 AM in Netduino Go

@Arron / Dan, Congrats! What type of software library supports this prototyping module (not talking about ST's StdPeriph stuff)? Cheers, -Fabien.

#29026 Prototype module prototyped on a prototype Protomodule

Posted by Fabien Royer on 14 May 2012 - 04:21 PM in Netduino Go

@Dan

I'm always looking for ways to save myself time during module development and the ProtoModule seems to have potential for that.

However, I'm trying to understand the value proposition of the ProtoModule over the full-featured $8 STM8Discovery board made by ST, which comes with STLinkv1 and is accessible over USB for programming and debugging the chip.

The STM8Discovery board only requires soldering a Go! connector / pin headers to get going, requiring about the same soldering skill level as the ProtoModule.

I may be missing something, but in the case of the ProtoModule, it seems that the user would also have to purchase STLinkv2 separately for programming / debugging or at least would need to provide a USB -> Serial cable (i.e. FTDI-type of solution) to upload firmware to it?

It would be great if you would provide specific details on the requirements for working with the ProtoModule, end-to-end.

As far as the "Standard Module Firmware" goes: what specific features will it provide and when will it be released?

Thanks,

Cheers,
-Fabien.

#29048 Prototype module prototyped on a prototype Protomodule

Posted by Fabien Royer on 14 May 2012 - 09:14 PM in Netduino Go

Stop by chat sometime or add my on skype (unkwntech) and we can discuss it at length.

You've got a Skype contact request pending Posted Image

Resources are not that constrained on the STM8s, at least not from my experience thus far.

Generic firmware supporting virtualized I/Os for various peripheral types will challenge the capabilities of the STM8s, especially when using more than one at a time.

Cheers,
-Fabien.

#29219 Prototype module prototyped on a prototype Protomodule

Posted by Fabien Royer on 15 May 2012 - 08:27 PM in Netduino Go

Fabien, have you done a blog post or writeup on this? This is great information.

Hi Johnny,

I do have a blog post planned related to this.
Having said that, I'm swamped with other Netduino Go! work right now and I won't be able to write it for some time unfortunately.

Cheers,
-Fabien.

#36328 Prices and personal conversations

Posted by Fabien Royer on 30 September 2012 - 11:38 PM in Netduino Go

I also don't have any problem with you promoting your newest module, the DAQ, but there comes a point when you go from promoting it to spamming please keep that in mind

I very much appreciate the work that Mark put into his prototype temp / humidity sensor module and the video he made showing it. You certainly don't attack him for "spamming' and hijacking" your thread. But when I post something related to sensing temperature and humidity, I'm a thread spammer and a hijacker?

Fabien Royer, on 30 September 2012 - 02:22 PM, said:

<br style="background-color: rgb(250, 251, 252); ">Now, show me an alternative to the DAQ that allows connecting *any* kind of I2C sensors to a Netduino Go!
<br style="color: rgb(28, 40, 55); font-size: 12.727272033691406px; line-height: 19.09090805053711px; background-color: rgb(250, 251, 252); ">Done

Once again, this is misinformation: the Shield Base doesn't have I2C implemented even though the hardware exposes the SDA and SCL pins.

I've yet to lobby a single personal attack at you, and I'm not going to start now. I will ask that keep things respectful both here and elsewhere I know you have complaints about how certain things are going, or have gone, but the forums are not the place to air them.

You can't be serious. What was that Twitter post if not a personal, public attack?

Attached Thumbnails

#36319 Prices and personal conversations

Posted by Fabien Royer on 30 September 2012 - 09:22 PM in Netduino Go

Arron,

I'm not really sure $75 for a any number of small sensors is even remotely reasonable. I think individual $10-15 sensors are going to be better options for most users, both on price an ease of use. The IDC cable provides a much better user experience than just wires, after all I could do that with a breadboard for much cheaper.

I understand that you're still bitter about my questioning the value of your ProtoModule many months ago, that you took it personally and resent me for it, and that since then, you have taken great care of discrediting my contributions to the community any occasion you get. I know what to expect from you and that's ok.

However, if you had done the cost analysis instead of spreading misinformation, you'd know that:

Selling the seven features offered by the DAQ as individual modules would cost well over $75
I2C sensors, without the overhead of the supporting Go hardware, can cost anywhere between $10 to $20 by themselves depending on brand / function
IDC cables cost at least $2 each

Now, show me an alternative to the DAQ that allows connecting *any* kind of I2C sensors to a Netduino Go!

#36332 Prices and personal conversations

Posted by Fabien Royer on 01 October 2012 - 12:50 AM in Netduino Go

Since you've implemented I2C via some sort of proxy (I don't know how this works since I don't have a DAQ, and won't cause I cant afford it) I hope that you'll give guidance to Chris and Secret Labs so as to help them make quick work of finishing the ShieldBase. Something which would greatly benefit the entire community. And would gain you a significant amount of respect from people like me, who have uses for the ShieldBase that the DAQ is unable to fulfill.

The DAQ schematics and the source are open for anyone to review and re-use provided that attribution is given: https://bitbucket.or...r/nwazet.go/src
What more do you need? How is this not of benefit to the community?

And would gain you a significant amount of respect from people like me, who have uses for the ShieldBase that the DAQ is unable to fulfill.

Like what?

I think that overall you'll sell more by showing us that you know how to build products

You're joking right? Do I need to provide links to the Go! modules that we have designed and shared with the community or would that be considered too much spam?

it feels like most of your recent posts have been about the DAQ, which is great, but I think that overall you'll sell more by showing us that you know how to build products, and that you are a good guy (good will can get you far in business).

I'm the 'bad guy' now? WTF is that even supposed to mean?

Build good modules and do everything I can to help the community grow. I accomplish the latter part primarily by helping users, via posting in threads, and never seeming to leave chat.

That's exactly what Nwazet does and we share everything that we produce with the community. We're trying to make an honest living from our work. What more do you want from us?

#30918 Powering the Netduino Go! with a Lipo

Posted by Fabien Royer on 19 June 2012 - 09:32 PM in Netduino Go

I love the Nwazet plates as well but I never got Nwazet stickers with my orders.

Really!? I'll have to remedy that with twice the amount of stickers on your next order! Posted Image

Cheers,
-Fabien.

#26151 PIX-6T4 Game Console

Posted by Fabien Royer on 30 March 2012 - 04:18 PM in Project Showcase

The PIX-6T4 book is not quite finished yet (Bertrand and I have been insanely busy these past few months). We'll likely release what we have written so far as an open source book as soon as we can breathe a bit. Cheers, -Fabien.

#29068 Participating in the formalization of specs?

Posted by Fabien Royer on 15 May 2012 - 12:25 AM in Netduino Go

Hi Chris,

Once we feel comfortable with the performance of virtual i/o on the Shield Base, we'll formalize that into a spec. You're welcome to join with us in implementing that for STM8S if you'd like...Netduino is community.

Why is it that the community who helped launch the Netduino Go! is not able to participate in the formalization of this spec based on use cases and requirements and our collective experience with Go! so far? We, the module-builder community, will have to comply to that specification when the time comes, yet, we have no say as to what goes into it?

we're determined to use the go!bus interoperability logo program and virtual i/o to ensure that doesn't happen with the go!bus ecosystem. It's all balance...hopefully we can all come up with the best balance.

That's a great goal and I fully support it but right now, I don't understand where the notion of 'balance' enters the equation when the definition of the logo is happening behind closed doors.

The STM8S-Discovery can be a pretty intimiating thing to look at, so having a simpler starting point to work with (such as ItsDan and Arron's Prototype module) is really valuable.

As long as the value-added firmware is there to support the simplicity claim, I would agree. At the moment, the barrier to entry is lower on the STM8SDiscovery side.

-Fabien.

#29072 Participating in the formalization of specs?

Posted by Fabien Royer on 15 May 2012 - 12:54 AM in Netduino Go

Hi Chris,

Perhaps something got lost in translation here? You're more than welcome to participate. We're working on the reflashing code right now, but the standard virtual-I/O spec details are next up...and we'll be talking actively about them in the forums. We certainly welcome your input!

If you would like community participation, please create a 'standard virtual-I/O spec' page in the Wiki capturing the use case scenarios and requirements defining what is entering the Go!Bus specification. From there, we as a community, can comment on the document and have focused, educated discussions in the forums.

A lot of specs (think WiFi) are hammered out in committees, over a period of years. Some specs are hammered out by one person or a few people in a matter of days or weeks. We need to stay toward the latter, but we're going to try to find a way to do it out in the open so the best input can make it into the firmware and everyone can benefit.

We can all agree that design by committee sucks. Designing in a vacuum sucks equally as bad Posted Image

-Fabien.

#38372 Nwazet SD Card

Posted by Fabien Royer on 02 November 2012 - 06:50 AM in Netduino Go

Hi there,

The call to "sd.Initialize(GoSockets.Socket5, "SD")" is incorrect, so it makes sense that nothing's working

Have you looked at the tutorials on the DAQ product page? If not, check out this one which shows how to initialize the DAQ and how to use the file system: http://nwazet.com/co...Q/10-FileSystem

Cheers,
-Fabien.

By content type

See this member's

#35562 Shield Base Firmware v4.2.0.1 (beta 1)

#27129 Shield Base Availability

#30188 SetSocketPowerState

#30971 Seattle Mini Maker Faire: [nwazet demos source code / designs

#36536 SD Card Module Update

#36103 SD Card Module Update

#36193 SD Card Module Update

#34181 SD Card Module Update

#36264 SD Card Module Update

#29316 SD Card in Netduino Go

#33657 reset/reboot go

#26479 Redacted 00101100

#29043 Prototype module prototyped on a prototype Protomodule

#28994 Prototype module prototyped on a prototype Protomodule

#29026 Prototype module prototyped on a prototype Protomodule

#29048 Prototype module prototyped on a prototype Protomodule

#29219 Prototype module prototyped on a prototype Protomodule

#36328 Prices and personal conversations

Attached Thumbnails

#36319 Prices and personal conversations

#36332 Prices and personal conversations

#30918 Powering the Netduino Go! with a Lipo

#26151 PIX-6T4 Game Console

#29068 Participating in the formalization of specs?

#29072 Participating in the formalization of specs?

#38372 Nwazet SD Card