Before we talk about new features, let us thank you all for your patience while we went through all of the major changes in recent months. The work load was huge and not easy but with the amazing team we have at GHI Electronics we were able to achieve amazing results. See previous news announcements for further details on these changes.
USB Host on the Cerb family of devices
We are proud to bring the USB Host feature to the Cerb family, just like all other NETMF SoMs. IF you have a FEZ Cerbuino then the USB host connector can now be used. If you have a FEZ Cerberus, you can now plug in the USB Host module and use it, just like you would on the FEZ Spider. But due to memory limitations, USB Cameras are not supported. USB mass storage devices, mice, keyboards, and even serial devices are supported.
RLP for the Cerb family
Not only were we able to add USB Host but we were also able to keep RLP for the Cerb family! The RLP memory size was reduced from 12k to 4k, however by using existing extensions you can dynamically use memory from the heap for use with RLP.
Commercializing the Cerberus firmware
As announced before, beginning in 4.3, the Cerberus firmware is no longer open source and it is not available for commercial use. We are still working on the details but we are going to release the next generation NETMF System on Chip (SoC). Simply put, we will provide you with an SoC that harnesses the power of NETMF in the package of a chipset. This is not all, by using this SoC you will have a full commercial license with no additional licensing fees!
Stability of the current SDK
The previous SDK was downloaded over 2000 times with only a handful of reported minor issues, which were all fixed in this release. There are still a few small issues that we are working on and they are posted on our issue tracking system. As for adding further features, we are not planning on adding any new features until all issues are 100% covered. Our goal is to have a rock solid NETMF SDK release before the end of this year.
The Internet of Things!
This is the new catch phrase that everyone is using these days, so lets talk about this a bit. We very strongly believe that NETMF is the answer for most networking needs, for the Internet of Things (IoT). It is right in the middle, in the sweet spot, between basic low-level-difficult-to-develop systems and full-blown-slow-booting-virus-magnet-operating-systems. We are concentrating all our efforts now on improving the networking features, including Ethernet, WiFi and even PPP. This includes showing some complete project examples on what can be done with NETMF and the IoT. And speaking of PPP, we were able to establish a connection between two NETMF devices over PPP but the TCP/IP layer is still not working properly. This feature will be addressed in the next release.
Thank you again for all your support through the years and we look forward to the challenges that lay ahead!
NETMF SDK 4.3 R3 2014: http://www.ghielectronics.com/support/netmf/sdk/21/netmf-and-gadgeteer-package-2014-r3
Issuer Tracker: http://www.ghielectronics.com/tracker/list/open
