MS Gadgeteer Site

Just been looking at the .netmf gadgeteer main site. Its a shame that the news is so out of date :frowning:
The latest news item is dated 11/9/2011. There has been loads of news since then (more modules, cerberus, Argon R1 etc). Is there someone who looks after the site that can be nudged to update the news and keep it fresh?

Who handles the press releases for Gadgeteer?
http://www.netmf.com/gadgeteer/news-press.aspx

Users here have barked up that tree previously with little effect. My assumption is this issue is mostly due to very limited resources in that group. Gadgeteer is only one tree in the forest of MS Research, and a sapling at that.

Yup. A member of the Gadgeteer team posted here asking me to let him know when GS was ready to go…left no way for me to contact him. ::slight_smile:

That’s very true. It’s a shame though as there is so much going on. Especially when you add in all the great work that’s being done by the community.
I hope Kerry spots this topic and gives someone a poke to update the news at least :slight_smile:

NETMF & Gadgeteer are open source… All they have to do is ask for help and I’m sure they’ll have no problem getting it :wink:

This is what give me some concern about .netmef. Sine we are this little sapling, there is nothing to prevent MS from yanking the plug on it. I could be way off on that statement, but i feel like MS should either get in or get out.

I remember years and years ago, when i was browsing Sparkfun, i came across a .netmf gizmo there. I watched that video on the board and said wow thats cool how easy it was to set up and get going.
Here i am re-encountered with .netmf again and the best source around GHI and i am having a hard time believing how little progress was made in all that time. I know i am going to get slammed for saying that. But let me explain. its been at least a few years since the SFE find. Now years later, there are things that i would have expected to be proven, etched in stone and so on. There are only a very limited amount of plug in main board modules out to date. I am hopeful that Gadgeteer will change all this. But i would like to see MS put much more resources into the whole thing. How can they not see that .netmf will probably bigger than anything as before for embedded to date.

Ok, i will accept my punishment now for being wrong and or to vocal. ;(

I haven’t read the open source license NETMF is using but I suspect it’s like most in that anyone can take the source and start their own branch if they wanted. This rules out the possibility of the technology going away. However, it could make a huge dent in the full-time people working on it…or not.

I have to agree with you here. I jumped into NETMF in 2008/9 then back out for a year or so. During that time the main thing that changed was the companies producing hardware. NETMF has been very slow to evolve and I wonder how much of that has to do with MS being the only gatekeeper. The more I think about Netduino GO!, the more I wonder if maybe they went that route because progress with NETMF & Gadgeteer is so slow and by creating their own platform they could move it along faster. How long did it take to get from 4.1 to 4.2?

I doubt that will happen. Even if it did, we (netmf community) would keep it plugged in.

I think i come off bitchy at times. But its not my intent at all.
Its frustration on something so cool that is not plastered on every bathroom wall.
I.E. "Want a good time, get .netmf " LOL…

IMHO, .netmf has far better potential for embedded than anything out there to date.
N need to buy a compiler.
No need to buy a RTOS.
No need to buy a TCP/IP stack
No need to buy a Graphics driver
No need to learn each one of these from independent companies and then work on getting all them to play nice with each other. If they dont then the finger pointing starts. The RTOS people will point the finger at the TCP/IP stack people and so on.

We’ll get there. :wink:

I was just testing to see if anybody reads the news section! :slight_smile:

In seriousness, the team is still here and quite engaged. Our focus of late has been:

  • Releasing a 4.2-compatible GadgeteerCore with updated support in the Visual Studio Designer for VB and 4.1/4.2 compatibility checks
  • Refreshing content elsewhere on the site (education case studies, etc.)
  • Finding and writing about projects that use Gadgeteer in interesting ways
  • Infrastructure updates to the Web site so that hardware manufacturers and project creators can add their writeups to the showcases themselves, rather than waiting for one of the Gadgeteer team to do it.
  • Lots of talks, events and workshops.

So while we are a small team, we’re still working hard on Gadgeteer. And I don’t mind a gentle reminder if I’ve overlooked something (like the news section :-[)

Long-term, the vision for Gadgeteer support is much like NETMF - Microsoft will maintain the core libraries and work with the community to prioritize work for future releases and integrate community contributions to the project.

Kerry, I don’t think anyone has any doubts that you all are working very hard. You just need more help! Have Steve jump on here if he has any doubts and we’ll put in a good word for you. :wink:

That’s great news Kerry, .netmf has such a potential and so my main concern was that without regular news updates it can appear that not much is happening and the technology is stagnating. This is a dangerous thing to have happen and becomes grist to the mill for detractors.
I’ve spent a l lot of time in marketing and if there is one thing that is vitally important it’s keeping things fresh. The news item would be the simplest way to start IMHO. Until that is you get budget for more head count that is :wink:

This is what happens when you put marketing in the hands of engineers and researchers :smiley:

I should also mention that the NETMF team is doing lots beyond Gadgeteer, too. They recently announced the NETMF 4.3 roadmap: http://netmf.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Roadmap%20for%20Next%20Version&ANCHOR. So there’s quite a lot happening in this space.

I know that the thread started with the Gadgeteer site but the same criticism is true for the netmf site so I thought I’d chime in here as well. We have been hearing concerns about Microsoft’s commitment to netmf almost since the day we started - 5 years ago now. The model that we have adopted is a small team of predominantly development resources focused on supporting the technology so we have not put the same effort in communications that we do in the technology. I know that decision has its costs and we will try to be more active on the site. We are also happy to hear from you when we are overbalancing in any particular direction. In the mean time, we are continuing to think about and working on making the product even better.

So, while there are never any guarantees, we contnue to see good support for the product and our efforts to make it available to the Open Source community.

I forgot to login before sending - sorry - this is Colin Miller

That is great to hear! Thank you for all your hard work!

Nice to see you here Colin :slight_smile:

Thank you for the information.

Thanks to Kerry and Colin for clearing things up. We look forward to using netmf 4.3 and to use gadgeteer even more. Many uses here are religious about their love to these awesome technologies. I guess what we are asking for is more news posts showing newcomers how active netmf and gadgeteer really are.

Colin, welcome to the community :wink: We hope to hear from you more often around here. Keep up the great work!

Welcome Colin and thanks for the update. I’m sure I speak for everyone in this community when I say if there is any help we can give then please just ask :slight_smile: