Beginner advice netduino vs arduino

Hi, I am just holding my order currently, as I suddenly had a dilema between the arduino and the netduino. A quick overview of what I want to do... I am a newbie and I am just starting to learn asp.net (as I need this for development at work). I have had a play around in visual studio and like the feel of as opposed to the arduino editor. I currently write in vb but am starting to learn C#. I want to used the arduino/ netduino to help me learn to program and make web interfaces, again this is relevant to work but also a personal interest. The project I have decided on is a web interfacing aquarium controller. I have already bought the following parts and would just like and idea of whether they are compatible with the netduino and if I can use them all together, as I have bought them basically to meet the spec of my project. Ph stamp - http://atlas-scienti...ID=32&category= Arduino MicroSD Shield - http://www.hobbytron...keyword=Arduino MicroSD Shield DEV-09802 XBee Shield - Sparkfun - http://www.hobbytron...yword=WRL-09976 XBee 2mW Chip Antenna - Series 2 (ZB) - http://www.hobbytron...ca?keyword=XBee 2mW Chip Antenna - Series 2 (ZB) Serial Graphic LCD 128x64 with Backlight - http://www.hobbytron...?keyword=Serial Graphic LCD 128x64 with Backlight The idea is I want to control and measure temp, ph, light intensity, light schedule, maybe flow, and water level, maybe some solanoids, pumps, air pumps. With this I want to control it and monitor it over the web and also be able to interface with it manually. The device will have schedules and store parameters. I would really appreciate if anyone can offer any advice as to whether these items can all be used together with the netduino, I am pretty sure I will need some form of relays and PWM's for LED control. A brief summary as to fesability and guidance towards which board to choose would be amazing. Also any problems I may encounter e.g. possible lack of example code, drivers etc. I hope you can help and then I can get my order shipped tomorrow, can't wait to get started. Thanks in advance, Andy

Hi Andy, Welcome to the Netduino community, hope you like it enough to buy a Netduino Let me state this first; I haven't got any experience with an Arduino and as Netduino moderator I can't be very objective. I can only tell you what I like at the Netduino. I like the Object Orientated environment, including Visual C# 2010 Express I like the fact that a debugger is included I like that I have friends who also have a Netduino to share experiences I like this community, as moderator I can say they're a bunch of very nice people! I hope someone can give a good comparison of both development boards, but this expresses my feelings about the netduino a bit

Hi Andy,

I currently write in vb but am starting to learn C#.

Not sure if you knew this yet, but Netduino now supports VB as well as C#. It's currently in beta (note: requires non-Express version of Visual Studio at this time).

Chris

Hi Andy, I worked on a similar project I read temperature,pH,ORP and D.O. It was a good learning experience for me. The Netduino Visual C# stuff works well. As far as your hardware, you look like you have everything you need to get started. Yeah, you can get it all to work with Netduino, that's not a problem. The pH stamp by Atlas Scientific works amazingly well and they have the best customer service ever! I sent them an email question and they got back to me in 10 min. I don't see that you have any hardware to read flow (FYI a good flow meter is $$$). Believe it or not, flow was a bit tricky for me. Good luck Garcica

Hi, Well WOW, what an amazing community, I have done a lot on excel and access forums in the past and had some great responses and many not so great responses, but to have so many useful responses in such a short time has more or less made my mind up. Netduino here I come... Garcica, thank you for your detailed answer I'm sure you will be a lot of help in the future as I get in to developing my aquarium controller based on your previous experience. Out of interest can anyone recommend any expansion boards to provide more I/O and Garcica can you recommend any PWM's and relays to deal with LEDs and mains device control? Thanks again to everyone and I look forward to being part of the netduino community. Andy

Netduino here I come...

Good choice

_{does a virtual high five with Chris Walker}

Out of interest can anyone recommend any expansion boards to provide more I/O

There are several common IC's for this goal. See this thread for more. There are also chips for multiplexing analog and PWM ports.

Again, thanks! Really useful info and a great project well done. I am more than sure I will be using this at some point. I guess this could be used in conjunction with shields and to add more shields to a project? PS netduino in the post and I have already had a go at a few simple tutorials in visual studio. Do you think the ph stamp is likely to need an rs232 converter chip to use with the netduino like this one? http://www.hobbytron...rs232-converter

Again, thanks! Really useful info and a great project well done. I am more than sure I will be using this at some point. I guess this could be used in conjunction with shields and to add more shields to a project?

PS netduino in the post and I have already had a go at a few simple tutorials in visual studio.

Do you think the ph stamp is likely to need an rs232 converter chip to use with the netduino like this one?

http://www.hobbytron...rs232-converter

Hi Andy

No,no. Don't use that part!
The stamps use RS-232 at the voltage level that the processor is running at.
So, for the netduino it's 3.3 volts. There is no need for voltage conversion.
You just hook it up to the netduino board. Don't do any level conversions.

G

I think you'll find NetMF far easier and much less frustrating to learn on. The interactive debugging in NetMF makes it worth it alone! You can see where your error is and step through the method to see whats going wrong. On ardiuno you cannot do this so what might take 5 minutes to debug on NetMF could take a day on Arduino if you're unlucky. Being high level languages, C# and VB take care of pretty much all the hard stuff for you, meaning you can just write the code. The libraries are simple and well named making it fast and easy to develop. All in all, you can't go wrong with Netduino

Thanks G, I will be getting on with the ph stamp shortly, just trying to start with what I thought would be more simple, the ds18b20. Also I still need a ph probe any advice for a reliable, fairly accurate probe that doesn't require constant recalibration and has a decent life span that doesn't cost the earth? @ Mark H thanks for the, info I really like the feel of visual studio, not too many worlds away from the vba programming I am used to. Just trying to get my head around the library's and firmware, are there any that I will need in particular to use a ds18b20, a wifly, a serial graphic lcd 128x64, atlas ph stamp etc? Thanks again everyone! Andy

I found the following link to be very useful for samples and "libraries"

http://code.tinyclr....Projects&page=1