i didnt want to derail the new ethernet posts regarding the wiznet support for a things fez so i thought id ask in a new thread, beings as i have a domino i opted for here.
now heres my confusion and to be honest i think i just missing the point and the answer is probably obvious, but here goes, so to communicate with the domino i could use serial or usb or i could utilise for example as i have used these before a ethernet or wifi bridge to serial such as a lantronixs matchboard. so say i use one of these i get a virtual serial port on my pc hey presto a bit of messing around and i can send data to and from the domino from say a c# silverlight or wpf app runnning on my pc.
so that being said i see the wiznet unit is essentially i think a spi interface to the domino so what benfit does having the ethernet stack etc etc availble via spi give me that say a ethernet to serial doesn`t .
like i said before its proably obvious i just dont see it right now.
ps i been watching the community grow over the last few months since i brought my fez and wow is all i got to say to ghi. shame i have had way too many work projercts to get though but its easing up now :))
Ethernet to serial gateway and the SPI-based WIZnet chips provides the same service or feature and you can use either\or in your project according to what you need.
But with the new native driver provided for WIZnet W5100, we provide standard C# classes under these namespaces: GHIElectronics.NETMF.Net;
GHIElectronics.NETMF.Net.Sockets;
that look exactly the same as the full Microsoft .NET framework no only NET Micro Framework
With this compatibility, you will handle sockets the same way you handle them on you C# .NET on your PC. For example, a simple web server C# project on your PC also compiles and works on your FEZ Domino with minor changes.
Not to forget the very low cost with WZInet W5100 chip. This is an important point for commercial projects with custom designs with USBiz chipset.
With those serial Ethernet or wifi modules you get VERY limited networking. All you get is a one socket which you can’t even control. The module does all the work an you only have serial<-> Ethernet gateway.
Now, with wiznet, you have multiple sockets (up to 4) which you can control anyway you like. A good example is that you can implement FTP or TFTP with the wiznet implementation. Or any ethernet .NET C# code you find online will probably work with minimal modifications.
Now, for the big device like EMX (FEZ Cobra), they include a full blown TCP/IP stack that almost does everything your PC can do! With up to 128 sockets and megabytes of memory for buffering.
