.NET Micro Framework

Time Lapse photography/filming  is a technique to show very slow processes. It is the opposite of high speed video. Everything is shown a lot faster then it actually happens. To make a time-lapse video you take a picture every n seconds and merge them to a video. If you take a picture every 5 seconds and put them in a 25fps video the speed increase is 5×25 = 125x. More information on Timelapse can be found on Wikipedia.

Timelapse video of clouds. Made using MFTimelapse with 5 second interval and a Samsung ES15.

There are camera’s that have a time-lapse function build in. This is of course the easiest method. There is only one drawback. Making a time-lapse video is not good for your camera. For a short video you’re making thousands of photos, for each photo the shutter has to open and close. Therefore your camera will wear out very vast.

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Basic overview of Widget System

You see them more and more, on phones, computers, MP4 players, etc. Widgets. And I think it’s logical becouse the user can now choose what he or she has on her display.

I tought it would be usefull to have some sort of Widget system on .NET Micro Framework. An example: a termostat has multiple sensors for humidity, min/max/current temperature, etc. Some users find the humidity very important but others are more interested in the minimum temperature. With Widgets they can choose what to see directly.

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I introduced it before, MFBrix, a simple ball game written to test out the new board from GHI, The ChipworkX. It uses the onboard acceleration sensor and onboard MP3/Midi decoder.

The object of the game is to remove all purple bricks by bumping into them. But you have limited time to do this. And if you would bump into a red block you loose 5 seconds.. The game has 5 levels/rounds. Each level getting a little harder.

Ofcourse there is some room for improvement, so if you find this a fun project you could add new levels, add a highscore system, download levels from the internet, you name it!

Youtube movie:
You can watch a movie of the game below:

Download:
You can download the Visual Studio 2008 solution: MFBallV2.zip

I want to write a simple but fun app that could showcase/test the functions of the new ChipworkX board. I tought of a simple ball game that could be controlled by moving the board. This is done trough the onboard BMA020 accelerator sensor.

It took me some time to figure out how to do the collision detection but I have an initial version ready. The idea of the game? You have to blast away the purple bricks in the game without touching the red bricks. I’ve done some testing and it’s harder then you think

The game isn’t ready yet. The video/source is as demonstration only! The red walls don’t harm you yet and there is only one level. When it’s finished I will upload it to microframeworkprojects.com

You can whatch a YouTube video below:

And download the Visual Studio 2008 solution:
MFBall.zip

Maybe everybody knows already but the Dare to Dream Different Challange finalists have been announced! Unfortunatly I’m not one of them but still I find it very cool that people put so much and usefull effort into their .NET Micro Framework project.

Here is the list of the finalists (from the contest website)

Hobbyiests

Professionals:

I whish everybody the best of luck and congatulations!!

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