I just wanted to drop a ‘thanks’ to GHI.
I just got back from a business trip with a box full of a competitor’s .NET MF boards that were destined for a commercial project. I took them as they have Ethernet on the main board, which made for (I thought) a neat hardware solution. This was the first time I’d used those boards on a commercial application.
Well, then I was presented with major problems with the TCP stack. Socket.Connect would never return if the network cable was out, and there was no way of determining if the network cable was out. Also, the Socket.Connect would fail if the board had simply been idle for more than 5 minutes. And no watchdog.
I wasn’t happy. Fortunately a local distributor had one Panda II and Fez Connect available, and I got those as quickly as I could. One day later, a VERY stable device was running, just in time to demo to the client and get orders in for a box of Panda IIs and Fez Connects for the initial deployment of devices.
I’ll stick with GHI products. Lesson learned.
Next step … I’m going to do my own board with a USBizi144, a Wiznet5100 & RJ45, a USB client, and a space for optional IEEE 804 POE, with all the USBizi pins brought out (not Arduino). That covers 95% of the parts I use for most commercial devices. Parts are all on order.
Phil
Thanks, GHI