NETMF 4.3 for all GHI Electronics' device is available today

It is finally here, the 4.3 beta SDK with support for all GHI Electronics’ NETMF devices. As explained in previous announcements, all devices now share the same GHI extensions, same libraries and same documentation. Due to memory limitations, the Cerb-family firmware may not have all features, no SQLite for example. We are still squeezing more into the firmware so there is no official list of what is not supported yet. This also means the Cerb-family firmware is no longer open source; however, the porting kit includes the STM32 sources and our 4.2 sources are also available.

As for the FEZ Hydra, it is still open source and now distributed at cost, only $24.95! We are hoping that this open source NETMF board will aid anyone interested in learning to port NETMF. The firmware can be compiled with GCC and the board layout is done in EAGLE. This combination is the complete solution for an open source hardware (OSHW) design. Note that the any extensions FEZ Hydra my have will be using the same GHI libraries from the official SDK, which are not open source. This should not reduce the openness of FEZ Hydra as these are simply C# wrappers around the interops and they can also be easily decompiled using available free tools, like Reflector from Redgate.

Another exciting change is PPP, which has now been added to the SDK. We did not do any testing in this release but we are planning on doing so in the coming days. Please consider it as not functional for now but, if you want to help us in testing, please let us know what you find.

Finally, a separate SDK will be provided for all discontinued products. This will allow us to continue to improve the quality and simplify the main SDK and then freeze the discontinued products into a separate SDK. Of course, the source code for the drivers are still openly available under the Apache 2 license, allowing for commercial and non-commercial use. Documentation regarding the Discontinued Gadgeteer Product SDK can be found here, http://www.ghielectronics.com/docs/299/discontinued-gadgeteer-product-drivers. This link will also be available on the NETMF support page, .NET Micro Framework – GHI Electronics.

Please post any bug reports on this new thread dedicated for beta 3 issues on our beta forum, https://www.ghielectronics.com/community/forum/topic?id=15983.

As always, your feedback is most appreciated.

NETMF and Gadgeteer Package 2014 R2 Beta-3 : http://www.ghielectronics.com/support/netmf/sdk/16/netmf-and-gadgeteer-package-2014-r2-beta-3

2 Likes

Sweet. New material to pick on.

@ Simon from Vilnius - We prefer the term “quality assistance” versus “pick on” 8) .

Two questions.

  1. Any news about shipping in bubble envelopes?
  2. For commercial Cerberus application, 4.3 will only be licenced if running on GHI hardware. Will you then distribute bare MCUs, much like USBizi many moons ago?
  1. We are still working with our reps on pricing and different options.
  2. Still in planning stage.

I am sure ready to do some serious PPP testing, do you have any preferred method, as I am kind of noob in the PPP arena…

Cellular module, and then what…?

Will the scatter files for GCC be updated on bitbucket ? what is the recommended GCC version ?

Thanks.

My use case is: Taking a picture initiated by the PIR sensor, establishing a connection with the cellular module, uploading the picture using HTTP POST with simple authentication, closing down connection, restart.

EDIT: Btw, this use case was my first Gadgeteer use case, that I am still eager to have working… (its 15 months since my first posts on this forum about this exact use case)

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Good question. We haven’t done GCC in a while. Can you help in this area?

I think you should put this into a seperate thread. Anyway, the PIR module is probably the simplest Gadgeteer module. Buy a decent module on ebay and wire it up based on the Schematics to the GHI motionsensor (which is discontinued).

Sure, will take a stab at it. Will spend some time on it this weekend and post back. I am sure that folks like taylorza, can help with questions :wink:

just some feedback for Jeff and Dat …

… this is great stuff guys, installed the B3 version, update the demo FW, change the demo project refs compiled and deploy and guess what … the network worked instantly with the RS21 even without the antenna …

… thank you all for the great support …

Is the device code for STM32 already included in PK ?
Because i downloaded latest PK and seems there is device code only for STM32F10x MCUs.
Can you please clarify about PK?

Thank you.

Check this

https://bitbucket.org/ghi_elect/netmf-42-oshw/src/33ca37bcf763f3e2e1dc6062310d6908cad11607/Solutions/FEZCerberus/?at=master

I am also ready to help to do some serious PPP tests :slight_smile:

We welcome anyone to help in testing PPP but for starter we recommend this to be done by users who completely understand mobile modems, AT commands, the PPP protocol and have a SIM card with data plan.

I have not even looked at the new firmware, worse still I have not even downloaded it :-[ so I might not be much help, but I sure will try.

My project for the weekend Gus. I have a fully setup board with modem from the old ChipworkX days so I will be eager to test this. Should we report this here or is it better to create a new thread for this?

We are also have board with 3 different modems (GSM, CDMA 450 & CDMA 800) and with connected G120 module and have 4 SIM cards with data plan ;D

Thank for the link. But i meant for 4.3.