UPDATE: Forgot to mention that if you want to keep up with my hardware projects, I post video demos to my Devhammer Vimeo channel. You can also see info on some of my past projects on the Garage page on my blog.
Thanks to all the folks who came out to hear my talk last night at CapArea.NET on “Communicating with the Internet of Things”. I’m embedding my slides from the talk below, including some additional resource links:
Continue reading Slides for “Communicating with the Internet of Things”
One of the things I love most about developing for the .NET platform is the wide variety of devices and form factors that I can write for using a single language, namely C#. With Microsoft’s recent announcements about the reach of Universal Apps, that’s more true than ever. But it’s not just true for Windows devices, you can also develop for devices and IoT using C#. And you don’t need to wait for the Windows 10 port for Raspberry Pi 2, either.
This past week, my friend and fellow Microsoftie, Pete Brown, ran a neat online symposium for the Microsoft Patterns & Practices group. As part of the event, Pete did an hour-long session introducing the .NET Micro Framework, and many of the cool things you can do with the various devices in the NETMF ecosystem, including Netduino, Netduino Go, and .NET Gadgeteer boards like the FEZ Spider. He was even kind enough to do a demo of the Meeblipiator project I put together using his Gadgeteer MIDI module (the demo is at around 45 minutes in). Here’s the video…enjoy!
Continue reading Pete Brown Geeks out on .NET Gadgeteer and Netduino
At the end of what’s been a kind of tough week, with a spring cold making its way through my entire family (one of the perils of having young kids at home), I got a nifty package in the mail. Inside was an anti-static foil bag containing the parts for a nifty addition to my Gadgeteer hardware collection, the new MIDI Module created by my friend and fellow Microsoftie Pete Brown. I should have thought to snap a photo of the kit before assembling it, but I was sufficiently excited I could hardly wait to heat up the soldering iron. Here’s what the finished module looks like:
So, OK, you might ask. Looks neat, and all, but what does it DO?
Well, for the uninitiated, MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, and the short definition is that it’s a serial protocol specification that lets musical instruments “talk” to one another. MIDI allows devices to communicate musical information (which note to play, how loudly to play it, etc.) digitally in a highly efficient format. Instead of creating a waveform and pushing it through limited bandwidth pipes, MIDI allows a controller device to simply provide instructions on what note should be played, which channel it should be played on (MIDI supports up to 16 channels per interface), along with any information on the specific sound (referred to in MIDI parlance as a patch) and parameters (referred to as control change) for the target device. Then the controller leaves the actual generation of the sound up to the receiving device.
So what Pete’s module does is allow a .NET Gadgeteer program to act as a sender or receiver of MIDI data. Which can be pretty fun stuff, with just a little work.
Continue reading Gadgeteer and MIDI: Making Music with Microcontrollers
Well, so the blog isn’t only about Gadgeteer, but I love the title, and the fact that his most recent post shows the beginnings of an RPG (open source, no less) running on the FEZ Spider Gadgeteer board, is Awesome in my book. A definite Critical Hit.
I love Gadgeteer, and I love RPGs, so it’s a great combo in my book. He’s also got some good posts on Windows Azure as well, so don’t just stop at the Gadgeteer posts…lots to learn here.