Netduino - hello led!

Are you a .Net developer but you also dream of doing some electronic projects, like.. blinking leds? There is a app.. err.. board, for that. Netduino is the name.

I’ll go on with a short description of what is it. Netduino is a small board, with a form factors same as Arduino, a very popular prototyping board. Netduino is easy to connect to the computer with a usb cable, all written software is deployed with a simple run button click. The software is written in C#, with the the .Net 4.1 Micro Framework. The new version of the Micro Framework, 4.2, has support for VB.

As for electronic features, it has 14 general purpose input-output ports. Connect LEDs to them and make them blink, or control the garage gates if you like.. 6 analog ports are handy if you want to hook up a temperature sensor, or any other thing that has an analog output. It can handle UART, SPI or I2C interfaces so you can add any other piece of electronics that needs a communication interface. Controling servo motors is easy as well with PWM.

Thirst thing I did when I got it was blinking 2 leds, the code is as follows (one is an onboard led another one I hooked to GPIO13):

using System;
using System.Threading;
using Microsoft.SPOT;
using Microsoft.SPOT.Hardware;
using SecretLabs.NETMF.Hardware;
using SecretLabs.NETMF.Hardware.Netduino;

namespace NetduinoApplication1
{
  public class Program
  {
    public static void Main()
    {
      OutputPort ledBlue = new OutputPort(Pins.ONBOARD_LED,
        false);
      OutputPort ledRed = new OutputPort(Pins.GPIO_PIN_D13,
        false);
      const int colorBlinkCount = 4;
      const int colorTime = 50; //ms

      while (true)
      {
        for (int i = 0; i < colorBlinkCount; i++)
        {
          ledBlue.Write(true);
          Thread.Sleep(colorTime);
          ledBlue.Write(false);
          Thread.Sleep(colorTime);
        }

        for (int i = 0; i < colorBlinkCount; i++)
        {
          ledRed.Write(true);
          Thread.Sleep(colorTime);
          ledRed.Write(false);
          Thread.Sleep(colorTime);
        }
      }
    }

  }
}

And the web site netduino.com. A place where you can buy it with reasonable shipment price sparkfun.com. As you can see on the latest link, it comes in 3 flavors, the mini, the standard and pro with network capability.

.Net FTW!