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Mario Vernari's Content

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#60726 Azure Veneziano

Posted by Mario Vernari on 16 November 2014 - 04:11 PM in Project Showcase

Second part is on...(scroll to top)




#60803 Modbus-TCP library

Posted by Mario Vernari on 26 November 2014 - 12:32 PM in Project Showcase

Hi Mario

I set up a modbus TCP client, but I'd need to send registers in string format. Could it be done?

 

Thanks

Alessandro

 

Ciao Alessandro.

If you mean Modbus ASCII, then the answer is "no". However, you may create your own codec for such a standard. Have a look at the RTU codecs, and the design is easy enough.

Riciao




#60860 Azure Veneziano

Posted by Mario Vernari on 04 December 2014 - 08:08 AM in Project Showcase

Third part completed...(scroll to top)




#60873 Azure Veneziano

Posted by Mario Vernari on 05 December 2014 - 07:52 AM in Project Showcase

Many thanks everybody, but that's only the beginning!

 

I'd like to create something funnier, so I'd invite anyone is interested to join.

I know that many of you like robots, buggies, Legoes and other evil machines. The idea is to "connect" those toys to the cloud (for a limited time), and leave them to interact by themselves.

 

Feel free to suggest what you think and share your opinions.

Have a nice weekend!

Mario




#61093 Azure Veneziano

Posted by Mario Vernari on 29 December 2014 - 10:49 AM in Project Showcase

Seeedstudio LinkIt ONE board porting completed...(scroll to top)




#61113 D13 - LED On Screwshield- Issue with SPI?

Posted by Mario Vernari on 01 January 2015 - 10:26 AM in Netduino Plus 2 (and Netduino Plus 1)

Hello Chris, and have a happy new year, as well as your family.

 

The led shouldn't be an issue, because the current flowing is low. I'd recommend to keep the SPI speed relatively low, let's say 1-2 MHz max. Also try to keep the SPI wiring short (6 inches max) and, possibly, of the same length (SCLK, MISO, MOSI, SS).

The general rule is: the slower the signals are, the easier will be everything work fine.

 

Have a nice holidays.

Mario




#61115 D13 - LED On Screwshield- Issue with SPI?

Posted by Mario Vernari on 01 January 2015 - 04:03 PM in Netduino Plus 2 (and Netduino Plus 1)

Very appreciated, thanks.

 

Just a small note more, although maybe you won't face this case.

You know, the SPI must be "opened" (enabled), and of course can be "closed". When it's closed, the D13 pin (as well as the others involved) can be used as a normal I/O. That is, whenever you set that pin as "input-with-pullup", the led+res act instead as a pull-down. Thus, you should "avoid" this (let's call) collision, because the resulting (floating) voltage may be at an intermediate level, which results in an unstable read.

 

Again, just an alert than a concrete issue. However, if the led+res were connected to the I2C pin that would have been a very annoying trouble, because I2C leverage the pull-up resistors.

 

Hope it's clear.

Cheers




#61140 Just discover Netduino!

Posted by Mario Vernari on 04 January 2015 - 07:47 AM in Netduino Plus 2 (and Netduino Plus 1)

Here is my (modest) contribution...

 

I believe that iced98lx answered mostly fine, although I never liked Go! nor Gadgeteer.

Netduino Plus 2 is a very nice board, which *never* leave you disappointed, except when...you'll enjoy so much, that you wanna have more, and...there's NO more than a Netduino.

This is the biggest fault, IMHO.

 

Please, don't mind my signature comment, because derived from the huge blackout in NYC some year ago...keep it likely as a "too deep dependency of the humans from the energy"

 

BTW, I really endorse Spiked. Maybe he's very "direct", but...it's just what I've written above: the real problem is "behind" the Net MF project, and MS in general. Many, many, many announces, but nothing concrete. We use to say "lot of smoke and no roast".

I wouldn't bet a single cent on what will be the future, but it's also evident the dramatic change that MS shown after the Nadella leading.

 

Technically speaking, the Arduino board is not "much" different from the Netduino: they both have a microcontroller (MCU), they both have I/O ports, they both have their own features, limitations, etc.

What's *really* different is the firmware inside, or "what the programmer sees". Arduino offers a minimal 8-bits MCU, with few resources (RAM, flash, speed), thus there's *NO* alternative other than "the programmer must help the machine" (C language or so). Netduino leverages its super-powerful 32-bit ARM core to simplify *A LOT* the development, the debugging and many other things.

 

A frequent surprise is about the "port toggling frequency": whereas an Arduino can toggle an output in the MHz-order, the Netduino barely performs 100 times lower...and it's a 180MHz CPU!

The most straightful answer should be: write a complete HTTP app (for instance), then let's remake the "comparison".

 

They DO NOT compare: they're two different approaches, which also may interact.

The Go! idea was nice: use the C#+.NetMF power for the higher level "app", then leave the lowest "physical" level task to a small, inexpensive chip. That's the right way. What I don't like is the "plug-and-play" way of doing that: the hardware is maybe the hardest thing to standardize, and most of the times, as soon you do it, it's already legacy.

However, many users like this way of "glueing" hardware: don't follow my words much, I love hacking hardware.

 

I don't know much about R-Pi or Galileo, but I think they're different beasts.

 

Have a look at my blog, there are many examples of Netduino exchanging data with serial, TCP, and to the Azure cloud.

http://highfieldtales.wordpress.com/

 

Good luck.




#61143 Issues Reading Stream from HttpWebResponse

Posted by Mario Vernari on 04 January 2015 - 01:35 PM in Netduino Plus 2 (and Netduino Plus 1)

The Thread.Sleep(500) at the beginning looks useless. Rather, add a Thread.Sleep(100) inside the while.

 

Moreover, inside the same "while" you're creating a new byte-array object on every cycle: that's causes an unnecessary yet expensive memory management. Create it once outside the "while": there's no need to create a new one all the times.

 

Finally, instead of reading always a lot of useless bytes (256), consider asking the stream how many are still to pull off, and use that value in the "Read" method.

Another way is the following:

https://github.com/h...erviceClient.cs

 

Good luck.




#61279 Introducing Netduino.IP, the shiny new TCP/IP stack for NETMF

Posted by Mario Vernari on 15 January 2015 - 06:41 AM in Netduino.IP Technical Preview

I may put my modest contribution to the project, although I'd have a couple of questions...

  1. coding the stack as managed code, would offer a decent performance yet reliability? From the experience I've collected with N+/N+2, the low-level layer are the most critical section, and coding them as managed unfortunately yields to a mediocre result.
  2. is there anything "interesting" at the horizon, like...for instance...ability to compile a C# app natively?

Chris, I know that you won't disclose anything, even under heavy torture...but could you justify a bit more this decision of porting the stack on C# (apart the bugs)?

Cheers




#61397 Microsoft Azure IoT Contest

Posted by Mario Vernari on 28 January 2015 - 04:55 AM in General Discussion

Create a Microsoft Azure application that unlocks the true power behind embedded and connected devices: the web services and applications that actually connect those devices.

Sponsored By
MicrosoftLogo_60x74_.jpg

You could use Azure and the CodeProject API to create a mobile web app to keep track of your CodeProject rep points from your phone, or build a webservice that allows a LED on your Netduino board to blink when you get a new message. What about constructing an IoT-powered robotautomating your home or creating a dashboard that connects to your Fitbit to track your fitness? The sky's the limit - suprise and impress us!

Submit an article outlining how you built your Azure IoT app (with code snippets and screenshots) and complete tasks and missions for your chance at loads of cash prizes.

 

Read here:

http://www.codeproje...oT-Contest.aspx

 

Good luck to everyone!

 

Please Chris, make this post as sticky.

 




#61434 raspberry pi 2

Posted by Mario Vernari on 02 February 2015 - 06:50 AM in General Discussion

I wouldn't open my Champagne bottle....yet.

R-Pi is much a muscle-toy than a reliable board: consider it has no flash on board. The Netduino has its own limits, but it's way more reliable than R-Pi. Whenever someone will talk about BeagleBone, that would be another story.

Anyone reminds the "revolutionary" Galileo and Edison? Anyone could point a decent support for them?

 

Honestly, I still haven't see anything "revolutionary" in the MS world. Maybe the most awaited thing they SHOULD publish is the ability to natively compile the C# code, and (for the MF world) the ability to create native drivers without recompile the whole framework.

 

In my drawer there are a BeagleBone and an Intel Edison still waiting, but on my breadboard there's a Netduino working.




#61435 Things we can learn from GHI

Posted by Mario Vernari on 02 February 2015 - 07:04 AM in General Discussion

I'm not going to lie, GHI has a much better community. Why?

  1. Trained experts supporting new comers VERY well.
  2. A very reliable Gadgeteer production.
  3. Many members can show their custom made parts.
  4. Their "Codeshare" is a brillient place for Drivers.
  5. Though not as open source, good structure and gameplan.

I hope we can all learn from this.

 

What should we learn?

It seems to me that, especially on the "hot" Netduino era, this forum was plenty of enthusiast people. Also many of them were experiencing the Netduino forum as a "big family", full of warmful users.

 

Gadgeteer, in my mind, is a flop. Nothing more than a flop.

My philosophy endorses the KISS principle: http://en.wikipedia..../KISS_principle

The Arduino board boomed because its simplicity, as the same was for Netduino...

 

Many projects created on Netduino are still alive and used even on other platforms: why do you say the users "didn't show their parts"?

If you mean about hardware, I may agree, but it's not because the forum, but because the users. Honestly speaking I often see users refusing to learn a bit of electronics...what else?

 

The problem isn't Netduino, but MS which almost dropped the MF project. That's a big blame, at least in my opinion.




#61441 Things we can learn from GHI

Posted by Mario Vernari on 02 February 2015 - 08:44 AM in General Discussion

Also an over enthusiastic admin who deletes posts and has an interesting marketing perspective....

 

Uh? Could you explain?




#61448 raspberry pi 2

Posted by Mario Vernari on 02 February 2015 - 01:11 PM in General Discussion

RPi is a proven device, also available in an embedded format (compute board).  They probably sold more today in 11 seconds than all others combined forever. It's barely second all time to Arduino, which IS a prototype platform like the Netduino.   If the hype to open source .Net to linux et al ever happens, it's just 1 more thing on a successful product regardless, but certainly not a dependency.

 

They sold thousands of boards for true, but the quantity does not make the hardware more reliable over another one.

Again, the board ships with *no* flash, so you must connect a SD. Would you rely on a SD connector durability (dust, oxidation, etc) along 1+ years in a normal city climate?

Have a look at some comparisons between the PI1 and the BBB:

http://makezine.com/...aglebone-black/

 

I can flash an app to a Netduino/Arduino and forget it for years (possibly avoiding the pins connection as well).

 

 

When you can get a PI for $35.00 why would you spend $60.00 on a Netduino 3. Especially since Windows 10 is going to run on Pi 2.

 

https://dev.windows....Program-for-IoT

 

Again, I'd wait for "singing in the rain" until some concrete signals are coming...

I've heard the Galileo and the Edison support, but nothing concrete. There's also a Compact porting for the BBB, but without much support.

 

By the way, the current Netduino and a "bigger bro" will have several differences, that you can't wipe off with a bunch of bucks less.

Here are some:

  • power consumption
  • power-up time
  • hardware support (I mean *how* to write your own driver, *how* to port your own board, etc)
  • NVRAM support
  • software stability (I mean porting support)
  • actual processing speed (the MF is way lighter and OS-less than a regular Windows)
  • licensing price?...this is unclear.

Somebody says it's free, but WEC 2013 is also "free" unless you use for commercial applications (i.e. not hobby/prototyping)...

 

I want to see some real-life app, both headless and UI, then I'll decide whether that's a good news or not.




#61449 raspberry pi 2

Posted by Mario Vernari on 02 February 2015 - 01:22 PM in General Discussion

...just forget...

MF does have sense...if MS will *SERIOUSLY* develop it...otherwise I totally agree that PI or whatever else board will replace it.




#61480 Help me out with SPI Please.

Posted by Mario Vernari on 03 February 2015 - 06:31 AM in Netduino 2 (and Netduino 1)

The Netduino 2 Plus had some issues related to the SPI, and should have been fixed with the latest firmware.

That was sure for the Netduino Plus 2: not sure about the simpler Netduino 2.

 

Those issues were mostly related to the worse SPI hardware logic in the ST chip, than the older Atmel.




#61547 News from the MBN team

Posted by Mario Vernari on 07 February 2015 - 05:04 AM in General Discussion

Very nice, but you'd to file this post under the "Projects showcase" category for better visibility.

Thanks for sharing.




#61557 set brightness for Room light

Posted by Mario Vernari on 07 February 2015 - 03:15 PM in Netduino Plus 2 (and Netduino Plus 1)

 

Please be careful - mains voltages can and do kill people!

...

 

Have (safe) fun - Paul

 

Hence the famous words: "make love, don't make war, and play with mains responsibly"...




#61606 Finding bytes in byte array

Posted by Mario Vernari on 13 February 2015 - 11:31 AM in Visual Studio

Aveiro, Portugal! My wife was there once, and told me it's an awesome city!

 

As far I know, there's no any immediate way to achieve kinda "Array.find", but of course you can create it. If you were using the regular (i.e. desktop) .Net Framework, you could use Linq, which allows to "compose" whatever function you want with ease.

For the Netduino, you can use something like that:

 

                var source = new byte[] { 00, 22, 33, 44, 0x55, 55, 66, 77, 88, 99, 10 };
                var index = Array.IndexOf(source, 0x55);
                var targetLength = source.Length - index - 1;
                var target = new byte[targetLength];
                source.CopyTo(target, index + 1);

Hope it helps.

 

 

 




#61613 Another custom PCB based on Netduino Plus 2

Posted by Mario Vernari on 15 February 2015 - 06:33 AM in General Discussion

That's very nice, but...some questions:

  • where are the I/O pins (or else) for sensors and related?
  • the Wi-Fi is an option/alternative to Ethernet, or is unavailable?
  • could you post an image of the bottom view?

Congrats so far, and good luck!




#61635 Finding bytes in byte array

Posted by Mario Vernari on 17 February 2015 - 05:16 AM in Visual Studio

Hmm...but what do you mean as "the first one"? That is, what's the expect "end of block"?

Looks like you have to deal with a kind of pattern, and you have to extract all its occurrences...

 

Anyway, before knowing what's you answer, you may also consider another way to deal with such a situations. It may sound as an overkill, but when you have to deal with data extraction (in general), composition, and others function to/from a byte array, the below one is maybe very neat.

http://cetdevelop.co...eArrayReader.cs

(and related classes)

 

It's basically a bunch of classes for byte-array manipulation: reader, writer, data extraction and insertion, etc.

Please, note that the library is a bit "aged" (about two years), but should be working fine with the latest firmwares.

Cheers




#61669 Netduino MiniSumo robot

Posted by Mario Vernari on 20 February 2015 - 05:05 AM in Project Showcase

Amazing! Very nice indeed...

I know it's a dumb question, but...why they run so fast?

Just another question...who's "Enova"? I mean, which kind of "brain" powers it?




#61680 Netduino MiniSumo robot

Posted by Mario Vernari on 21 February 2015 - 04:36 AM in Project Showcase

They are a polish team, and I think their bot is C++ based on a homegrown PCB. They have two microcontrollers onboard. One exclusively for sensors, and one for motors.

 

It's just a matter of time: C# will definitely beat C++, and the world will be a nice place to live...(and programming machines will be feasible without brain transplant)
 

In april there'll be a couple hundred robots in Wien for an annual competition. Robotchallenge.org. I haven't been there yet, but can hopefully go next year. 

 

 

April in Wien? Really? Do you mean this year (2015)? At the end of April I should travel very close to Wien: let me know the details...




#61690 Netduino MiniSumo robot

Posted by Mario Vernari on 22 February 2015 - 04:54 AM in Project Showcase

It's on the 11th and 12th of april this year.

See http://www.robotchallenge.org

I won't be able to go this year, but hopefully next year.

 

Oh!...My chance would be near the end of April, not before.

Definitely better the next year, so I'll take the chance to visit the city once again (really worthwhile).

Cheers





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