Independent developer team bringing mikroBUS™ and .NET toget

[srdjan.misic]

Independent developer team bringing mikroBUS™ and .NET together



Christophe Gerbier and his team of hardware and software passionates has been working on
bringing click boards to the .NET Micro Framework development platform (NETMF). The result: mikroBUS.NET boards!

Niels Jakob Buch from the team calls this a revolution in sophisticated development of
flexible hardware, simple as 1-2-3. Users just have to choose their NETMF board
of choice, plug in the needed click boards, launch Visual Studio (free for the Express version) and
start coding with .NET in C#. Deploying managed code to small devices is simple.

The board runs a brand new firmware based on the .Net Micro Framework 4.3 – and the MBN
team wants to express their greatest appreciation to the work done by Oberon MicroSystems on this.

Team member Justin Wilson, a seasoned hardware designer, created two boards.
They’re not yet in retail but we took a peek at the prototypes: the Dalmatian
with 2 mikroBUS host sockets, and the Quail which packs 4 slots. Both carry
a STM32 ARM Cortex-M4 MCU. The mikroBUS.NET team also designed a Gadgeteer
click board, for interfacing existing Gadgeteer modules through mikroBUS.
With 70 click boards and 50 Gadgeteer modules, most makers should be covered.

Here are the main features of the Quail board:

• 168mhz STM32F427 2mb Flash 256kb ram
• 4x MikroBus sockets
• 8 MB external flash
• 1x USB prog / power
• 1x USB Host mass storage
• 1x screw terminal for DC power
• 24x screw terminals GPIO
• 4x GND headers
• 2x +5v headers
• 2x +3v3 headers
• 2x users buttons
• 2x user LEDs
• 1x power LED

On the software side, the mikroBUS.NET team already has .NETMF drivers
for 8 click boards, with many more on the way. All are open source, written in C#
managed code. Since there are more than 70 click boards to begin with,
the mikroBUS.NET team made the coding of drivers easy – also inviting in
more people to be a part of this exciting team. There are four templates for
Visual Studio for creating them, and it looks easy to get started with.

This is exciting development. Just like we brought mikroBUS to the Pi community
recently, there’s also a community of NETMF fans out there, waiting to discover
the convenience and ease-of-use of the mikroBUS standard and the
accompanying ever-expanding range of click boards.

The mikroBUS.NET team is eager to get more people involved, so if you're
interested in helping with the project, feel free to send an email to team
leader Christophe Gerbier (becafuel at lsp-fr.com)

Yours sincerely,
MikroElektronika

[MaGiK]

Here is a quick video showing the small one (Dalmatian) with capsense click and bargraph click
Enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0RXCzYS7EM

Best Regards

Ohhh ... one last thing. @ Mikroe, I love you guys! Keep up the great work!

[krikitu]

And coding is really simple. Here's the source code of the demo running on the video :

Code: Select all

using MikroBusNet;
using MikroBusNet.Events;
using System;
using System.Threading;

namespace Examples
{
    public class Program
    {
        static CapSenseClick Cap;       // CapSense Click board
        static BarGraphClick Bar;       // BarGraph Click board

        public static void Main()
        {
            Cap = new CapSenseClick(Hardware.SocketOne, 0x00, 100);     // CapSense (I²C) on socket 1 at address 0x00
            Bar = new BarGraphClick(Hardware.SocketTwo);                // BarGraph (SPI) on socket 2

            Bar.Bars(0);                                            // Clear bars

            Cap.ButtonPressed += Cap_ButtonPressed;                 // Subscribe to the ButtonPressed event
            Cap.SliderDataChanged += Cap_SliderDataChanged;         // Subscribe to the SliderDataChanged event

            while (true)
            {
                Cap.CheckButtons();             // Checks if any button is pressed
                Cap.CheckSlider();              // Checks if slider value has changed
                Thread.Sleep(20);
            }
        }

        static void Cap_SliderDataChanged(object sender, SliderEventArgs e)
        {
            if (e.FingerPresent) { Bar.Bars((UInt16)(e.SliderValue / 5)); }     // Using default CapSense resolution of 50, displays 0 to 10 bars
        }

        static void Cap_ButtonPressed(object sender, MikroBusNet.Events.ButtonPressedEventArgs e)
        {
            // Light on the led of the corresponding button when pressed (and switch off when depressed).
            Cap.LedBottom = e.ButtonBottom;
            Cap.LedTop = e.ButtonTop;
        }
    }
}

Quite simple, isn't it ?

[jasdev55]

Wow! As a newbie to MikroElektronika, but a long time NETMF programmer, I love the marriage between the two. This is a fantastic development. Congratulations for a great product!

[krikitu]

Thank you !

We, the MBN team, felt it was "natural" that NETMF and Click boards meet some day. Our challenge was to make this meeting the easiest as possible for users and I think we're close to succeed.


_______
Christophe

[p.erasmus]

How big is the code foot print ??

[krikitu]

Main DLL : 11 Ko (mandatory)
Led8x8 driver : 7 Ko
CapSense driver : 9 Ko

Demo app : 11 Ko

Is this what you wanted ?

[p.erasmus]

yes thank you

[krikitu]

And so ?

[MaGiK]

Since a post was made regarding the video of which I posted a link to, here is another video. This time with 8x8 Red Click.
Enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOYZzsA8NOs

And krikitu, keep at what you're doing. You're an inspiration

Best Regards

[krikitu]

Here's another demo, this time with the Quail mainboard (4 MikroBus sockets) :

http://youtu.be/HB5EHtOLjp0

What is not visible on the video is the Pressure Click board data :

[krikitu]

If anyone is interested by this product, you can have a look at the web site here : http://www.mikrobusnet.org

You will find info on how to use the Click boards with C#/NETMF, like code templates and tutorials.

[krikitu]

The Thunder Click driver has been added : http://www.mikrobusnet.org/#!blog/c1bk6

As usual, you will be able to download complete source code and example of use.

Usage is very simple, in fact. You create the instance, subscribe to events and poll the device

Code: Select all

 public partial class Program
    {
        static ThunderClick TH;

        public static void Main()
        {
            TH = new ThunderClick(Hardware.SocketOne);

            TH.LightningDetected += TH_LightningDetected;
            TH.DisturbanceDetected += TH_DisturbanceDetected;
            TH.NoiseDetected += TH_NoiseDetected;

            Debug.Print("Continuous input noise level " + TH.ContinuousInputNoiseLevel.ToString() + " µV rms");
            
            while (true)
            {
                TH.Check();
                Thread.Sleep(500);
            }
        }

        static void TH_NoiseDetected(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            Debug.Print("Noise detected");
        }

        static void TH_DisturbanceDetected(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            Debug.Print("Disturbance detected");
        }

        static void TH_LightningDetected(object sender, MikroBusNet.Events.LightningEventArgs e)
        {
            Debug.Print("Lightning detected at " + e.Distance + " km, energy : " + e.Energy);
        }
    }

This will give results like this :

[krikitu]

A small demo for the soon to come NRF c driver : http://youtu.be/HzOLYTIzizc

The Dalmatian board (small white PCB) is sending the text "Iteration N" with N increasing by 1 every 2 seconds, while the Quail board (large blue PCB) is acting as the receiver. When it receives data, it's displayed on the LCD.

Code example for the receiver :

Code: Select all

using System;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading;
using Microsoft.SPOT;
using MikroBusNet;

namespace TestApp
{
    public partial class Program
    {
        static NRFc nrf;
        static LCD03 lcd;

        public static void Main()
        {
            lcd = new LCD03();
            lcd.BackLight(true);
            lcd.ClearScreen();
            lcd.Cursor(LCD03CursorType.Hide);

            nrf = new NRFc(Hardware.SocketOne);
            nrf.Configure(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes("QUAIL"), 1, NRFDataRate.DR250kbps);
            nrf.OnDataReceived += nrf_OnDataReceived;
            nrf.Enable();

            Thread.Sleep(Timeout.Infinite);
        }

        static void nrf_OnDataReceived(byte[] data)
        {
            Hardware.Led1.Write(true);
            lcd.Write(1, 1, new string(Encoding.UTF8.GetChars(data)));
            Thread.Sleep(50);
            Hardware.Led1.Write(false);
        }
    }
}

Quite simple


More info on MBN boards on http://www.mikrobusnet.org

[krikitu]

Hello,

a bunch of new drivers and demos have been put online recently. You will find :

• DCMotor
• nRF-C
• Digipot
• Buzz
• SHT11
• 4x20 LCD (non Click board)
• Keypad 4x3 (non Click board)

Everything is on the MBN website : http://www.mikrobusnet.org