Releasing the NETMF and Gadgeteer Package 2014 R2-Beta1 SDK!

Press Announcements
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With months of planning and hard work, we are glad to announce the release of GHI Electronics’ NETMF and Gadgeteer Package 2014 R2-Beta1. This release currently only includes support for G400 (FEZ Raptor) and FEZ Hydra with other devices soon following.

What are the major changes?

This release is based on Microsoft’s latest release, NETMF 4.3 QFE1, also called NETMF 4.3.1. It also uses the latest Gadgeteer core 2.43.900. This release includes some important improvements to networking and also includes BitConverter.

The second major change in this release is the merging of assemblies. There were 18 assemblies in 4.2 and now in 4.3 there are only 7! This makes it easier for users to find the needed assembly and allows for better optimization.

The assemblies were further improved by merging OSHW and Premium. The exact same GHI.Hardware assembly will work on all of GHI’s 4.3 NETMF devices, regardless if it’s open or closed source. The only difference will be that the open source device will have limited support. For example, the SignalGenerator class is now available on open source devices; however, the SetBlocking method will work but the Set method will raise a not-supported-exception. Also, the full version of RLP is now available on open source devices with the exact same native prototypes. Similar to the obselete RLPLite, there are no RLP extensions on open source devices and the native methods are constructed from their base address.

Open source devices also now support networking through a single firmware. Developers can enable networking via a simple call to the networking assembly. As explained earlier, the assembly is the same one used on open source and on non open source devices.

The CAN bus class interface included a major face lift. Please take a look at the documentation, see link below.

Finally, the installer is now a single setup file that includes everything needed. The installer even includes NETMF 4.2 so users can upgrade and still use 4.2. It also includes Glide, GHI’s high-performance graphical library.

The Roadmap

All the major work on the assemblies and the installer is complete. The next step would be reviewing all of the Gadgeteer drivers for all mainboards and modules. The G120/EMX SoMs firmware will be next on the list of supported devices, followed by the Cerb family. The promised PPP will still be worked on but unfortunately it has to wait until the above tasks are completed.

We hope you will find this useful and we look forward to receiving your feedback.

Please submit any reports to this forum thread: https://www.ghielectronics.com/community/forum/topic?id=15400
The SDK: http://www.ghielectronics.com/support/netmf/sdk/12/netmf-and-gadgeteer-package-2014-r2-beta-1
The Documentation: http://www.ghielectronics.com/downloads/man/Library_Documentation_v4.3/
Transitioning from 4.2 to 4.3 : http://www.ghielectronics.com/docs/297/transitioning-from-4.2-to-4.3

8 Likes
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Oh boy, that’s some MAJOR changes in everything…

Interesting.

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Wow, finally it smells like true .NET!

But don’t worry. I will crack your new shiny CAN tommorow early in the morning, once I’m back at work :slight_smile:

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Sweet! Can’t wait to give it a go ;D

Nice work a of you!

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Is 4.1 still a separate install?

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  1. Some features will not be supported on OSH boards; how to know which ones?
  2. RLP looks very different. How to use it now? Do you have any examples?
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Is VS2013 supported?

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Correct, separate and not recommended on devices that support the newer frameworks.

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@ Gary - Ethernet uses a significant amount of flash and RAM. And if I am using wifi, it’s rather wasteful because it would not be needed. Correct?

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I’m a little confused. Does this mean that the full version of RLP is available and can be used with OSHW boards or its just included in the assembly and can’t be used plus RLPLite has been retired?

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@ ianlee74 - RLPLite has been retired. Hydra supports the RLP in GHI.Hardware.dll, except for parsing ELF files. You still need to load the bin file using the AddressSpace class. Then you pass the function address to the NativeFunction constructor. From there, invocation is the same across devices.

@ iamin - VS2013 is not supported yet.

@ Simon from Vilnius - The bottom of the transition document covers what Hydra supports. As for RLP, the below is a rough example:


RuntimeLoadableProcedures.EflImage = someByteArray;
RuntimeLoadableProcedures.InitializeBssRegion();
var addInt = new RuntimeLoadableProcedures.NativeFunction("AddInt");
var result = addInt.Invoke(3, 4);
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Could you guys be specific? I don’t own Hydra, but when it comes to Cerberus, I will not want to look for features that are functional using trial and error method…

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Big changes ahead, reducing the number of assemblies is a good thing, so when can we expect G120/EMX beta release?

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That’s a good point. Also, the Cerberus for instance, have CAN hardware support, but no support in the GHI libraries. I know there are .NET drivers for can support, but that’s not the point here.

Where do we know what’s supported, when hardware limits some features and implementation for specific features are dropped even when hardware support it.

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Great works,
where i can download sources for new release ?

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@ x893.00 - http://www.ghielectronics.com/support/netmf/sdk/12/netmf-and-gadgeteer-package-2014-r2-beta-1
(Link is on the first post)

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I means source codes for NETMF Porting Kit

https://ghiopensource.codeplex.com/

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@ x893.00 - The source for Hydra 4.3 can now be found on our BitBucket repository: https://bitbucket.org/ghi_elect

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@ Simon from Vilnius - I updated the transition document to reflect the specific features of the Hardware and Networking assemblies that Hydra does not support.

20

Cool, thanks! Will work for now.