More specific question about FEZ Panda II and Touch. Suitability for hobbyist who is used to WPF

NETMF & Gadgeteer
1

Hi,

I got a lot of useful info on: http://www.tinyclr.com/forum/2/4315/#/1/msg41097 Thanks everyone. I felt this was a slightly different question and warranted a seperate thread.

My background is C#/C++ and WPF on desktops. I see from browsing the forums here that I can’t do WPF if I buy FEZ Panda II and Touch. My questions are:

  1. Assumming I really want to use WPF what FEZ (or other) main board and display should I be buying instead?
  2. Is it the Touch that’s stopping me from doing WPF or the Panda II. I think it’s the Panda II, but what is the limiting factor in it?
  3. Assumming cheapness gets the better of me (it usually does!) and I refuse to pay more money to be able to do WPF, how limiting will that be? Can I still have a simple x-y plot (300 or less data points), grids, customized buttons, and icons? Are the libraries pretty easy to use? I did see there was one free one and one pay one (spiral?). Or am I going to be doing low level graphics programming like in the pre-MFC days. Can it still all be done from C# as opposed to C++?

I’m comfortable with WPF and don’t necessarily want to spend a lot of time learning a proprietary library that is only relevant to FEZ. After all, one of the main draws of the .NET microframework as I understand it, is suppose to be, “you already know how to do this. Take everything you know from the desktop and apply here”.

Thanks,
Dave

2
  1. Cobra and any of the three display sold by GHI for wpf
  2. memory
  3. There is an impressive demo using the FEZ Touch.[url] http://code.tinyclr.com/project/363/fez-touch-driver-ver-21/[/url]
3

I think you should talk to Skewworks about WPF, he’s currently doing a graphical interface (Gagetos; Phyxis3) for GHI devices. You can talk to him about your project and get input about how a user interface be handled in GHI products.
About the RS232 protocol and related, theres serveral guys here in the forums that know a thing or two about that.
feel free to give more input and welcome to the forums :slight_smile:

4

Have you consider GHI’s Glide?
[url]http://www.ghielectronics.com/glide[/url]

5

Joe is right… I forgot about Glide, geart software that makes graphical interface easy.
Im taking those online classes…

6

I don’t believe that Glide works on a Panda II with FEZ Touch?

7

[Glide Documentation]

[quote]System Requirements
Your .NET Micro Framework device must support the Bitmap class. We recommends mid to high-end devices such as EMX and ChipworkX.[/quote]

Don’t forget about Spiral. It’s made for the Panda-II.
[url]http://skewworks.com/products/Spiral[/url]