Ok so GHI are taking this head on which is really good as NETMF needs it but what is Microsoft’s view on NETMF?
I mean if MS decide to throw it to the ground again (SPOT anyone?) are we expecting GHI to pick it up and run with keeping it alive?
I suspect Gus et al have seen the future, hence why GHI are now using resource on Mbed and Beaglebone and Pi,but are these a hedge? I really love NETMF and with the Loss of Gadgeteer I feel real pain. I don’t want to see NETMF disappear like the Cheshire Cat, leaving only his Grin behind.
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@ HughB - we are always in contact with Microsoft and they knew about our plan before this announcement. If one day Microsoft decide to put a serious investment into netmf then we will probably know about it before you guys and will discuss and plan with them accordingly.
Either way, you will receive a top notch product from GHI.
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@ Gus - Sounds like a plan to me 
As always keep up the good work.
@ Duke Nukem -
I am aware about your work to promote Gadgeteer.
See the attached images. Does the first one feel familiar to you?
It is not the MS version, but the one we developped, and it uses the standard XML files and a little more.
The transparency helps to see information better than the original. The second image (zoomed for clarity) shows the full transparency while the mouse hovers a board. You may see all the available information,
including the signals names and the concerned pins, but also, the price, extracted by program from the GHI products page and the total cost below the current drawn for 3.3V, 5V and 12V.
When you write “Gadgeteer is actually a very complex system” we somewhat disagree ;).
Last december, we acquired for about 800 USD boards from GHI and a few more hundreds USD from other sources for sensors and motor drivers discountinued by GHI or even never in the catalog. But it is only the tip of the iceberg.
We invested a huge amount in more than 7 months developing dedicated tools (extensions to VS, application creating the XML files needed for non GHI boards, applications creating automatically drivers from PDF Datasheets including all the intellisense for VS, I2C component managing up127 devices in a transparent way, taking into account readonly registers, managing the endianess for short or integer values, read/write array of boolean, byte, short integer, while skipping bytes, processing masks (automatically extracted from the datasheet), it will be too long to describe here, an application managing large breadboards (3rd image) and of course applications.
You may understand our frustation, even if we may understand, from an industrial point of view, GHI position.
Great news…i love the mfnet experience, very hard to beat.
What is the main difference between windows iot and mfnet? Wont GHI chips become faster enough to run windows iot anyway?
Is the main difference, the resource usage cause the language is the same?
@ SouthernStars - wow, very nice. We are as sad, or even more sad, to see Gadgeteer go. Of course everything Gadgeteer is open source so you are more than welcome to take any of our designs and make them your own. We would even help you in manufacturing the boards if you want.
By the way, let us keep this thread about NETMF and how can we all continue on using this amazing technology. There is a Gadgeteer thread if you guys want to discuss it further.
@ SouthernStars - That last pic with the breadboard is HOT! Who makes that and how do I get one!?
@ anthonys - Not trying to derail the thread, but I don’t like questions going unanswered. Windows IoT requires adherence to a terms and conditions that quite frankly to me, seems a bit dubious.
With a money and time investment done into Gadgeteer and ending the way it did, I have butterflies in my stomach regarding .NetMf especially since I am committed and continuing to invest in the platform.
The problem that I face today is there is no real alternative (windows based as I am a c# developer) solution except going with PI and Win 10 IOT Core - but the Terms and Conditions using the platform commercially is a headache plus I think that the Win 10 Core still has a way to go before it will do what I need it to do (Many drivers to be written etc. etc.)
I WELCOME this decision from GHI and think it is a very good decision and step in the right direction - considering how widely the .Net MF is currently relied on and used. Technology changes constantly but there is cost implications for a company when a platform suddenly dies…
Thank you GHI and I look forward to what will be offered in the future.
Riaan
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GHI has complained about the lack of progression with Gadgeteer and NETMF for many years now, and their response is to start making redundant Linux boards and remove 80 percent of their catalog.
This decisions seems to be based on pure …
If your not happy with the progression of Gadgeteer, then grab the bull by the horns and create your own NETMF development environment, inspired my Gadgeteer but modernized and refined to please everyone from the beginners to the experts.
Visual Studio integration is not a difficult task these days and most of the code already exists. If GHI controlled the development of this framework from the beginning then you would have no problem providing support for all your boards and modules for a long time into the future.
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Whilst I am not totally surprised to see gadgeteer disappear, I do hope a similar modular hardware system (e.g. click) will continue to exist as it makes prototyping sooo easy. It always did fall down though when you are trying to create a single executable that will run on multiple SOM’s though so for me just a framework with an input/output pin map would suffice, currently I have based this on the gadgeteer ports/libraries but creating a new one wouldn’t be too difficult.
I would love to also see NETMF exceed as an open source system and I hope that GHI will work with the existing project on GitHub rather than just fork and create a wholly new derivative (Libre office vs Open Office comes to mind) and that what ever happens remains totally open source instead of creating a closed source system that is only compatible with their own products as vendor lock in is frowned upon in my company. Fixing core issues (especially around the SSL memory leak) would be awesome as well as expanding RPL so that a whole C library can be integrated.
Mostly though, what ever happens I hope GHI succeeds.
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@ Mr. John Smith -
Breadboard: 3 for 12.29 USD, : free shipping including power supply and jumper cable kit
@ SouthernStars - and I just made a video showing a $4 graphical display.
@ Gus - I don’t understand. We received these items and it is one of them in the image I published. It is absolutely real.
Now if you really have a 4 USD display, please provide the link
@ SouthernStars - 5 for $7.99 Amazon Prime shipping
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@ Mr. John Smith - 7.99 USD is for the power supply alone (5 of each), while 12.29 is for the breadboard, the power supply and the jump wire kit, 3 of each.
@ Gus - OK, amazing.
@ Mr. John Smith - Just ordered $7.99 for 5, Thank you.
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This…this is exciting!
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