.NET Gadgeteer
This weekend, Microsoft attended Maker Faire in New York and UbiComp in Copenhagen to demonstrate a really cool technology that has been developed and used by Microsoft Research in Cambridge England. It is a rapid prototyping system built on the .NET Micro Framework. There are three additional components (beyond NETMF) to make this a platform in which you can bring an idea to implementation in literally minutes. They have created a main board built around the GHI EMX module with a set of 16 connectors on the back. They have also built a broad array of modules that can simply plug into the main board without any specific wiring or even knowledge of the underlying protocol. And finally they have built a set of libraries to make the integration of these modules into an application extremely simple. It is called .NET Gadgeteer.
All that is required is to select the modules that you want to use and to plug them into the main board.
To get ready for the faire, we asked a number of volunteers in Microsoft (some without any hardware experience) to build some demos for us. These demos included a line following robot, a ‘Simon’ game, an MP3 player, and an environmental monitoring devices. To give you an idea of what these folks were able to construct with this technology, one group created a monitoring system that consisted of a central controller with a camera on a servo that could sweep and area or by position to a particular spot and remote environmental sensor. The controller communicates with the sensor over an 802.15.4 radio and the controller communicates of Ethernet (wired or wireless) to a web service with a Silverlight interface that runs on either a PC or a Windows Mobile 7 phone. From that Silverlight application, you can see the images captured by the controller, aim the camera on the remote controller, and see the input from the sensors. Clearly you can build some rich applications with this technology.
This technology is currently in development and use within MSR research but we did talk to several parties interested in investigating bringing the concept to a commercial product. We’ll keep you posted as this progresses.
Comments
Anonymous
September 28, 2010
Two words.... "I want"... one more...."Gimmie"Anonymous
September 28, 2010
Me too...Anonymous
September 28, 2010
some more..... Field. Test....... Me....Anonymous
September 29, 2010
Could Charles do another C9 video with Collins (and maybe Gus from GHI) on Gadgeteer? Eric Meirs would also have some thoughts on functional composition of hardware and software. He dreams about automated factories, so this kind of thing he would enjoy I think. tiaAnonymous
October 02, 2010
Worldwide Availability? When, where at what price... actually, price doesn't matter I want it!Anonymous
October 03, 2010
We are working on availability - worldwide. If all works otu well, by Spring.Anonymous
October 09, 2010
It is spring already! Cost? Is it a package or each peripheral a separate cost?Anonymous
October 11, 2010
All up to the company that brings it to market. They are all aware that cost is a key concern to this audience.Anonymous
October 11, 2010
Nice idea guys, this aproach is great. Keep up the good workAnonymous
October 12, 2010
Is there a mailing list for availability or updates?Anonymous
October 13, 2010
Hi Dale, We are looking into that possibility right now. Failing that, we will certainly keep you up to date on this site.Anonymous
November 03, 2010
Will the .NET Gadgeteer have a cellular SIM interface card? Also, when will the Gadgetter be available and is there a comperhensive list of device boards that will be available? Thanks, WilliamAnonymous
November 04, 2010
If this works as we hope, there will be a heathy ecosystem of modules. The exact availability and kit makeup will be up to our commercial partners. We are not in a position to make announcements for others I'm afraid.Anonymous
December 01, 2010
Are you able to share the current parts list for anyone interested in pulling it all together themselves?Anonymous
December 02, 2010
Hi Rob, There is nothing too magic about the parts list. It is built on a commercially available module - the Embedded Master from GHI Electronics. alot of the magic is in the software stack and the VS integration. There are two biggish design issues that we need to address before the stack is opened up - the pin mappings for the connectors need to be flexible enough to work with a variety of underlying processors and we need to make sure that there is support for seamlessly integrating modules from diverse sources. Look for some activity on this soon.Anonymous
December 13, 2010
Just what I have been looking for. I will visit this site frequently to find out when and where I can purchase.Anonymous
February 12, 2011
Any idea when this will be seen in the wild? Where should we look for updates on hardware availability?Anonymous
February 12, 2011
Do we have launch dates?Anonymous
February 14, 2011
We are in the final stages of re-working the architecture so that it is hardware independant. Once we do that, the plan is to Open Source the reference redisgns for others to build commercial applicaitons from. Unfortunately, that means that we have no specific dates that are under our control. Watch for updates on NETMF.comAnonymous
March 14, 2011
Wow! ...this could be huge! Great work to everyone involved!!!Anonymous
May 10, 2011
Any updates on this? I'm really hoping that this is coming to market soon!Anonymous
May 10, 2011
Never mind, saw the latest update on netmf.com. Sweet!Anonymous
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