.NET Micro Framework

Just before I started with my DreamQuest project I was working on a project called HomeTerm. HomeTerm is a web-enabled thermostat. The idea is that you have your HomeTerm device at home controlling the temperature just like a normal thermostat but with the added bennefits of the Internet.

You can control and monitor the temperature of your room from almost anywhere. You can enter a detailed temperature plan from the comfort of your computer. Also detailed graphs are available for temperature and humidity.

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I have a Meridan/P from Device Solutions but never given it a propper introduction. The Meridan/P has the same connections and powerfull functions as it’s bigger brother the Tahoe II but in a smaller package  (50mm x 50mm). It lacks the screen and the ethernet connection but both can be added externaly should be needed. The pinout of the connectors match up with the connectors on the Tahoe II so converting your project to this new board is easy!

I use the Meridan/P in my HomeTerm project now as external temperature sensor. The baseboard (Tahoe II) is connected to the Meridan/P with Xbee. The Meridan/P also controls  an RGB LED matrix allowing you to put the temperature sensor in sight. The baseboard sends the current time and external temperature from Yahoo Weather to the Meridan/P and in response to that it sends the current room temperature back.

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I’ve been working on my Dare to Dream Different Challange for some time now. With the finish of this round comming a little closer (15th of May) I want to lift some of the secrecy thats surrounding it. In this article I’m telling about the idea, sourcecode is not released.

The idea of my project is based on geocaching. Geocaching is a game were the participants use a GPS reciever to search for tressures or “caches”. Each tressure contains information what to do next. Quoted from Wikipedia there are about 800 thousand geocaches registrated on different websites.

The name of my project is called  DreamQuest. The first part of the name, “Dream”, comes from the name of the challange. The second part, “Quest”, comes from what this project provides:  Quests.

A Quest is an combination of the following:

• Information (Text and images)
• Questions (Multiple choice and text entry)
• POI, Point of interest
• Basic Program

Quests are made on a website and can be shared among users. The .NET Micro Framework device is connected to internet trough GPRS with an GM862 from Telit. This enables users to download and start a quest everywhere.

The visibility of information, questions and POI is controlled by the associated basic program. I’ve written an Basic Intrepeter for .NET Micro Framework (MFBasic) for this purpose. Besides access to the items that make up the quest, the Basic program also has access to the current GPS location and time.

With Basic controlling the visibility of information, questions and POI can be triggered with a host of different triggers, not limited to:

• Distance from current location
• Current time
• Current speed
• Travelled distance
• Correctly answered questions
• Many more..

By showing more and more items with different triggeres an adventure or “Quest” can be held without putting things in the ground but the element of supprise and not knowing what will happen next still existing.

When a user is doing a Quest, a score is calculated, so participants can compete with each other for the highscore enabling the social element.

Also tracking is supported so that you can see the track that you have made while doing a quest.

For my Dare to Dream Different application I needed to display a map of the area. I used the public source OpenStreetmap tile system. In this system there are a lot of 256×256 pixel images that represent a part of the globe. The way those tiles are named is described on the Openstreetmap website making it easy to use the tiles in a custom application.

The control provided here downloads the tiles in a seperate thread to keep the user interface responsive. The original images are PNG images that .NET Micro Framework doesn’t support. I have a simple converter script on my website. The url is in the sourcecode. You can keep on using that URL for hobby projects but when releasing your application in the wild you should make your own script as i’m not responsible for complaints that the url doesn’t work anymore.

You can see a Youtube screencast of the application (I recommend switching to HD display!):

The source here is provided AS-IS, the control is extracted from the DreamQuest project and parts of the source are removed to make it work independant so you could see some comments that dont make sence. Also I wont update this control in the future, I’ve you want to improve it you have to do it yourself

The source (Read the notes above): MFOpenstreetmap.zip

Enjoy!

Extra:
Celiker Bahceci from Turkey had about the same idea with the static maps API from Google and put this on CodePlex: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/UsingGoogleMapInMF.aspx So if you like my OpenstreetMap control you also check this out!

 

You might have heard it but things are shifting for .NET Micro Framework. It’s moving to the Developer Division at Microsoft with the intention to make it some form of open source. Microsoft is currently busy defining the rules of engagement. 

In the mean time many rumurs have spread all arround the internet. This makes people unceirtain if .NET Micro Framework has a future, and if it has, what kind of future.

Pavel Bansky, Jan Kucera and some other .NET Micro Framework users are now expressing their conceirns in this development and have written an open letter to Craig J. Mundie, the Chief Research & Strategy Officer involved with .NET Micro Framework.

You can read this letter here:

• Open letter from .NET Micro Framework Community.pdf

For more information on this subject:

• .NET Micro Framework evolution at .NET Micro Framework team blog
• .NET MF moves to Developer Devision at Michael Schwarz .NET MF Blog
• .NET Micro Framework at Device Solutions Blog
• Developer Center for .NET Micro Framework

On the facebook website of the Dare to Dream Different contest I put in a message asking people to publish their video’s. I’d like to see video’s posted,  not only to see what kind of chance I make entering the next round but also for the community. Exposure of the .NET Micro Framework will help to gather new entousiasts! 

So don’t be affraid and show your cool idea!

In the mean time, Ian Lee, Sr. has posted his video on his website! It’s an Electric Dog fence using the Tahoe II and Xbee. The video is realy great and you can see Ian is a real lover of LED lights

You can find his video on: 
http://blog.ianlee.info/2009/05/dare-to-dream-different-video-has-been.html

So let your dogs out!

Update:

More people have put their movie on the web, Valter Minute, James Y Wilson, David Vescovi and even someone of the profession catagory: Jean Michel

As promissed in the last blog item i’m releasing the sourcecode of the basic interpeter that is used in DreamQuest. I’ve called it MFBasic and made a logo for it

Not all functions that are available in the DreamQuest version are available (Mostly math functions) are available yet. I didn’t want MFBasic need other libraries. I will recreate those functions later.

It’s released with a GPLv2 licence meaning that you may use the code in your projects (also commercial) but you have to release the code of that creation. If you want to use MFBasic in a closed source project you can contact me trough the contact form.

Some of the supported features:

• WHILE -> WEND
• IF, ELSE, ENDIF
• FOR -> NEXT, STEP
• Line numbers of QBasic like labels
• Custom variable names (Variables ending with $ are string variables others are considered floating point)
• Easy to create custom functions
• Basic sourcecode is precompiled to run faster

It’s in alpha state right now.. I’m currently working on a State storage to store and restore current running state. Also I will add more functions and hopefully implement arrays

For more information and downloads visit the MFBasic codeplex website: http://mfbasic.codeplex.com/

Hi,

It’s been a long time since my last blog, I know, I have been consumed by my work and moving to my new appartment. But now I have some happy news, I submitted my video for the Dare To Dream Different Challange and I also want to share it with everybody.

The project is called DreamQuest. As you can see in the video it’s based on the hobby of geocaching.  With Geocaching people hide objects or letters and then share the GPS location. The object or letter gives a clue what to do next.

You can imagine that hiding stuff in the middle of a city centre can be difficult and not very vandalism proof. Here comes DreamQuest to the rescue. DreamQuest is a mobile device with an internet connection and GPS reciever made to do one thing, run Quests. A Quest consists of information, questions, points-of-interest and a script to glue everything together.

You can design and share your own Quests. The script is made in a simple but powerfull Basic language. This script controls when items appear or hide. This can be done based on location, time, distance, answered questions, etc. etc. You are in full control!

I will release the sourcecode of the project and the basic interpeter as soon as possible!

Here is the video:

Many people asked how I connected the GM862  to my .NET Micro Framework board (For people who don’t know what the GM862 is, the GM862 is a very powerfull GSM Module with build in TCP/IP Stack for GRPS and DUN, SirfStar III GPS reciever, Python Intrepeter, Jammer Detection and many more powerfull functions.) I’ve written a class for this and published this some time ago.

This driver class was  an initial version and I made a lot of changes to it. But I still didn’t like the stability of it, missing on unsolicitated responses like RING and GPS information, loosing track of the state it’s in (DATA/COMMAND or IDLE) etc. So I started writing a new version from scratch.

The biggest changes in the new driver class are:

• AT Command interface sepperated from the general GM862 class. This class is the base of all communication with the device. It now holds a central FIFO for recieved data and functions to recieve and send lines of text.
   
• Unsolicitated responses are stored in a special Queue that is handled on a user function instead of a seperate thread. This has the bennefit that you can control the moment that the responses are handled. This helps to make sure the handling doesn’t interfere with some of your block of commands.
   
• Also unsolicitated responses are fetched from the FIFO to the Queue on execution of a function.So if you want to make sure you get all responses quickly you can run a dummy AT command.
   
• The functions are split up in "modules". The module now includes the following modules: GSM, GPRS, GPS, TextMessaging and Networking. Networking is in a very early state and only has one command at this moment.
   

Stability seems to be improved a lot. With 3 unsolicitated GPS and GSM Info responses a second the interface kept on invoking commands al night without error.

Download:

The driver class is released as part of the  .NET Micro Framework toolkit. This toolkit was originaly named mschwarztoolkit and build by Michael Schwarz. We’ve decided to join forces to help the MF community. This joining of forces is in a early start but expect great things of it!

The MFToolkit website on CodePlex can be found here: http://www.mftoolkit.net/

Documentation:

There is a demo application included in the solution. Expect more info to come available soon.

As I mentioned earlier on my blog I visited Embedded World 2009 in Nuerenberg this year. I went there hoping to speak to some guys that you all may know known in the .NET Micro Framework cummunity. I can say that the visit was a great succes. It was great to meet them. Also three manufacturers where represented (Device Solutions from New Zealand, AUG Electronics from Austria and Digi from the United States). 

People that I met on Embedded World 2009:

• Michael Schwarz, known for .NET Micro Framework Toolkit: 
  http://netmicroframework.blogspot.com/
  
  
  
• Jens Kühner, known from the book "Expert .NET Micro Framework": 
  http://bloggingabout.net/blogs/jens/
  
  
  
• Jan Kucera, known from his great site with lots of .NET MF resources: 
  http://informatix.miloush.net/microframework/
  
  
  
• Pavel Bansky, Primier Field Engineer at Microsoft and .NET enthousiast: 
  http://bansky.net/blog/
  
  
  
• Andreas Schloffer and Markus Holzer of AUG Electronics (Maker of AUG AMI DevKit): 
  http://www.aug-electronics.com/ami
  
  
  
• Martin Welford from Device Solution (Maker of Tahoe I, II and Meridan board): http://www.devicesolutions.net/

 
Station Nuerenberg by Night
 

Andreas Schloffer with AMI DevKit in his hands
 

From left to right: Andreas Schloffer, Martin Welford, Michael Schwarz and Markus Holzer