I am looking for an alternative to the Netduino 3 Wifi, since the company supporting it unfortunately seems to be “dead in the water”, judging by the fact that its owner hasn’t connected to the Netduino forum for more than 6 monthes.
My requirements :
support for the latest NETMF version;
integrated Wifi (or, if an additional board is required, easy integration, accessible to a newbie);
good Visual Studio 2013/2015 integration/support;
overall good support.
I am primarily a software guy, with limited hardward experience, and I have not been able to find the right product(s) among all the options available, so any advice is welcome.
@ .Peter. The Oxygen looks nice, similar to my Photon, but I finally found Justin’s “ingenuityMicro” website, and the Store is closed.
@ Mr. John Smith That Alpha board with the “plugged” Wifi board looks interesting. Does anyone have the IoT Labs’ url, I have not found it yet ?
Six months ago, I think I found here on GHIElectronics a FEZ (Panda 2 ?) board that had integrated Wifi. Does anyone knows why it’s been discontinued ?
On one of my projects, mostly software oriented ([url]https://www.ghielectronics.com/community/forum/topic?id=21433[/url]), I have spent 25% of the overall time making the Netduino communication link to work reliably through a quite painful trial and error process. I am now trying to develop a “C++/Wiring” Client for the Photon, and I am again running into strange “networking” problems, the TCPClient library provided by Particle not really behaving as expected from the documentation. This to explains why I am looking for a well documented/supported product.
@ dranuag - Like Justin I have not setup a website except to distribute the SDKs and firmware updates. If you have any questions, PM me or ask in the threads I mentioned.
Justin needs to get off his shiny metal ar$e and turn on the store… at last count I think he has a few in reserve. Perhaps they’re in the container on the ship on the long trip from the UK, but he has a PnP and reflow and… perhaps just not time
That would have been the Cobra 2 WiFi. Awesome board. But yes, a pity it isn’t available any more, but GHI simplified their line ups and this option was cut - you can get the same with a Cobra3 and a WiFi module.
@ Brett - I understood that a Cobra III plus a Wifi module could be something equivalent to my Netduino. But when I see pictures of those Wifi modules (eg. those here on GHIElectronics), I am so “noob” about hardware than I cannot figure out how such a module will be connected to the Cobra (or any other board).
Is there a recommended Wifi module for that Cobra ? Are there tutorial somewhere on that topic ? Do I need some additional parts to make the connection, like those used by [em]munderhill[/em] on his Alpha board ?
@ dranuag - To give an advice you should give us some more details what you want to do with the board. Do you need the Arduino socket on the board to connect other Arduino modules? Do you need more than one network socket at a time? Do you need SSL? Do you want to use the device as an access point or connected to your WLAN network? Which role plays the price?
@ RoSchmi - I did not realize these were important choice factors.
Arduino modules : could be interesting, but not mandatory at all
Connectivity : the device will be the client of a TCP server (one socket?) and of a WCF service hosted on Azure.
SSL : probably a must for futur evolutions of my project.
Price : should be reasonable, since it’s an hobbyist projet. The Netduino 3 Wifi was fairly priced at 75€. I would not pay more than double that price for an equivalent.
@ RoSchmi - Thank you very much. I am not familiar with Gadgeteer, but that Spider board would be an interesting addition to my project.
I would go for the following, within my budget :
FEZ Spider II Mainboard
USB Client SP Module
WiFi RS21 Module
SD Card Module
Smart Multicolor LED Module (DaisyLink)
Tunes Module
However, since the WiFi module is rather expensive, I think I could alternatively go for an Ethernet J11D Module as a start and then give a try to @ munderhill’s board.
