Its SimpleStorage included already?

There's a new feature (SimpleStorage) in .NET MF 4.2 that we're looking at leveraging for this. .NET MF 4.2 will be in beta soon, and then we can start testing the implementation.

Hi Chris,

.NET MF 4.2 is available now. Does it include this capability? If so, how is it possible to use it? For my vote, with a hundred of bytes would be more than enough, for bigger data external EEPROM or SD would be justified.

Our first integration pieces are ADC and PWM (for the new object models) and misc. bugfixes--but this is the next item on the list after those. In the meantime, you can certainly store data on an SD card. [Also, the in-flash data storage will be for things like settings that don't change very often--not for constantly writing data.]

Hi Chris,

I'm aware of the flash aging problem, I just need to write a static setting (around 10 bytes) that will be seldom modified with the config of the application, and that's why SD or EEPROM is an overkill. I don't mind if it's Simple Storage, EWR, or ADO.NET against and internal instance of SQL Server 2010 Micro Edition, I don't care if the performance is good or not, of if it requires 20K of RAM, as I have a lot of it I don't use.
I know there are many people that have more resource constrained applications and might not want to consume extra RAM or FLASH for this, that's why I think the best way to approach it would be as a module using .NET MF APIs so people can choose to include it in the project, or not and use external storage.

Whatever will be OK. Is there any way to access the FLASH memory rawly? If I can take ownership of a FLASH block and rewrite it by myself it will work. I can even use two and implement a corruption-protecting algorithm that writes alternatively on both so integrity can be checked at startup, and old version of the config will always exist.

Carlos.

I will continue testing in deep tomorrow, but after flashing the TinyBooter it seems to work like a charm!! As I tought TinyBooter was only intended to boot the TinyCLR I thought it was not neccesary to upgrade it. Now I know something more Thanks Carlos.

Hi, I upgraded my N+ to 4.2, but only ER_CONFIG and ER_FLASH files. Is it neccesary to upgrade the TinyBooterDecompressor.bin as well? If so, this is only done with SAM-BA, right? What happens if the TinyBooter is not upgraded but the TinyCLR is? As a (i think unrelated) question, I'm observing the TinyCLR is taking very long to start up some times (up to 30 secs) with and without the Eth cable connected. I'm using fixed IP. What could be wrong? Thanks in advance, Carlos.

While you're waiting for it to start, what happens if you PING your device from MFDeploy? Does it return "TinyBooter"? Nothing?

Pinging... Error: No response from device

Then TinyBooter after some time. The weak thing is that "netduinoPlus_NetduinoPlus" appears in the combo immediately after I connect it

Hi Chris, Is this 50% more ram modification already included within the 4.2 beta that is actually available?

Hi Kenny, You always can use an USB cable and power the board at 5v by it. Carlos

Really nice project! I'm guessing how much hours did you expend on it, I'm sure that a lot of them! It's a pity to need a man on the middle PC, but it's true that Internet is a rude environment for a N+. One idea would be to use a N+ as front end, acting as a gateway; external phone would access to it through the firewall and this N+ forwards the query to the servicing N+ (the actual one). Gateway N+ can also be the one contacting the weather forecast servers. At the same time service N+ would ping&query the gateway N+ every short time and will power cycle it if it do not response (gateway N+ is powered through a relee controlled by service N+) It seems complex, but not requiring a PC worth the pain..

We could also add a Reset feature to a future firmware release. The function is already built into the firmware...we'd just have to create a wrapper for it. You could also create one and build it into your own custom firmware.

The firmware could also be tweaked to activate the hardware reset function in case an exception occurred. Lots of options.

Hi Chris,

Did you manage to include the Reset function within the firmware? if not, how can we tweak it to activate the reset without need to use a GPIO?
Can the firmware be tweaked to just reset the TCP/IP stack?

Did you ever work this out?

I'm thinking to ping my gateway to determine if my network on the netduino has died, or if the internet is down. If the network on the Netduino is to blame, I have to request a reboot. But I can't have the Netduino rebooting every minute while the internet is down.

How do you reboot the netduino by code?

I can confirm this bug.

Netduino will stay up for days on a quiet, local LAN. If I take it and plug it into our university's LAN, it freezes within minutes. The board remains responsive to input pin events, but the network connectivity no longer works until you press the reset button.

It seems the Netduino's stack can't handle tons of broadcast traffic created by management services on large lans. (Cisco proprietary, or STP, etc.)

Exact same behavior in my university, after few seconds of our typical 30-45KB/s background broadcast noise, while it worked fine for weeks at home with low traffic.

A potentials work around would be to put a cheap nat router between the netduino and lan, and port forward 80 on the wan side ip to the netduino. That should block all of the broadcast noise, but let in the http requests.

But this kill the beauty of a tiny electronic to connect something to internet. If an additional router was requited, then is better and far cheaper to buy an OpenWRT compliant router such as Linksys 54G for 60€ and program it in C

I would be just happy if it would be a way to reset the eth interface when N+ detect lose of network connectivity

There is SolutionWizard application in the .NET Micro Framework Porting Kit to select modules/features you want to be included in the firmware. Regarding the firmware size and memory organization, please refer to "Laying Out Memory on .NET Micro Framework Devices" topic in the Porting Kit documentation, which describes it in great detail.

Hi CW2,

Thanks a lot for your answer, everything is clearer now.

Hi Chris

Removing USB is pretty easy (and in fact, you can just copy most of the changes from the Netduino Mini BSP to the Netduino BSP and recompile).

But how? how do you control what parts of .NET MF are included and what parts not, and how do you know how big is the .NET MF being loaded (i.e. total size - fre size - our app size)

In theory .NET Framework requires 256MB of RAM, what is much more than the actual Netduino RAM size. It seems it's because the loaded .NET MF is stripped down, removing WPF support among other things. How can we know what it is included and what not?

Hi guys, I'm having similar problem than ColinR but only just listening. When I have my N+ connected to the campus network (heavily loaded network, mainly because broadcast packets) IP stack hangs after no more than 30 minutes. The rest of the code is working well as switch interrupts are executed toggling the led status, and a record is write to the event log within a text file on the SD card every 5 minutes, but network connectivity is completely dead until I reset the board. Same test on my home network works fine for days or weeks. Eventlog shows that the free memory is always 24K and CPU is under 1% load, but still get the same results in both 4.1 and 4.2 RC1 firmwares. If there is no easy explanation on this bug, at least it would be nice to be able to reset the network interface by software, so I can do it if detect there is a problem.

No one else have this network reliability issues? Is it al least posible to reset the network interface by code? Carlos.

Hi, I have been using my N+ connected to the network for a couple of weeks without problems, but suddenly the three LAN LEDs are not brighting anymore, and the DM9161 IC gets warm very quickly after the power is applied to the board. I tried erasing the micro by connecting the testpoint close to D0 to 3V3 but still the same problem. It was working and suddenly it stopped doing so. What can be wrong? Regards, Carlos.

WPF is available on .NET MF? Wow!!! I'm impressed. I don't find too much documentation on .NET MF but seems to be very interesting. I did a HelloWorld for Netduino in just 10 mins, able to comunicate trough the serial port, responding to interrupts, and using multiple threads. It's very very easy! I'm curious how do you configure/know what parts of .NET MF are included in the build for Netduino and what doesn't. Where can I find more documentation/info?

Hi Chris, Thank you, I'm very excited with the Netduino, even though I'm looking forward to have a Netduino Plus Yesterday I was looking for more documentation on the .NET MF arquitecture and Netduino SDK, and found the page I posted the link that says the minimun specs for .NET MF is 256KB of RAM, where it seems the Netduino is only requiring 68KB of RAM for operating. Is it because it only load a part of the .NET MF? or am I missing something? Regards, Dixon

Hi, Netduino specs says it has: Code Storage: 128 KB ● RAM: 60 KB but the minimun specs for .net micro framework are Minimum of 256KB RAM and 512K Flash/ROM (http://msdn.microsof...mework/bb278106). How is it possible it to work?

Hi Dan T, Cat 5 connector has the pins perfectly, but checking the pins with a multimeter shows that all the 8 pins are short-circuited!!! Chris: Actually there is nothing at all connected to the board, and both less brights. Yesterday when I connected the board to the PC it showed "Netduino" for a second, and then disappeared, but as I erased the micro, now it doesn't show anything I'm guessing the ethernet part is burned somehow, but the micro might be ok. I don't know if I should contact Sparkfun for warranty (as I was not doing anything with the board when it failed, it was just connected to the LAN cable and it stopped working) or maybe it would be a good idea to replace the "HS1198" transformer and try...

One month ago

Hi Netduinerd, You have to declare the switch as InterruptPort, so you will receive an event whenever it changes (as you receive interrupts with serial communication): Private WithEvents SW1 As new InterruptPort(Pins.GPIO_PIN_6, true, Port.ResistorMode.Disabled, Port.InterruptMode.InterruptEdgeHigh)

Thanks Chris. By the way, is there any known issue with the debounce filter for InterruptPort on Netduino mini? I'm trying 4.2 RC1 and I get lots of interrupts when input pin changes, as if debounce filter were not working

Notes on new SD card support
This firmware includes support for SD cards and System.IO filesystem support.

It includes two functions in the new SecretLabs.NETMF.IO namespace:
StorageDevice.MountSD(...);
StorageDevice.Unmount(...);

Both the MountSD(...) and Unmount(...) features are fully implemented.

You will need to manually add the SecretLabs.NETMF.IO assembly as a reference in your project to use the SD feature. You will also need to add the System.IO assembly.

Hi Chris, what is this new feature for? the previous firmware did not need to mount or unmount the SD in order to be able to use it. What's new now?

By the way, I always wanted to ask if all the writes to the SD are committed immediately or are buffered and lazily wrote in some way.