Introducing Socket Indirect!
Socket indirect is here but what is socket indirect? This all new Gadgeteer feature allows for modules to consume sockets, just like before, but they now can supply sockets. Take the new Hub AP5 module for example. It consumes one I socket but then it provides eight indirect sockets, in which five sockets are PWM capable and two are Analog capable. What makes this extra useful is that the Gadgeteer core handles all the work for you. Direct or indirect, you will be using the modules the same way you always did.
This gets even better as you can chain sockets! Take the S-Plus module for example. It consumes two sockets, S and Y but then it provides and extra S socket. But what if you need four S sockets (SPI sockets). All you need are three S-Plus modules, where you connect two of them to the third one and now you have 4 S-type sockets using one S-type socket on the mainboard, plus the 'Y sockets needed for other IOs.
Improving the Cerb-family Graphics Library!
We have made changes on the firmware to allow it internally to flush directly to the display. This made a significant difference on these RAM-limited devices. We also reworked the non-Ethernet firmware to add another 24KB to the heap. This is about a 25% improvement of free memory. What does all this mean? You can now use WPF and Glide on N18 display using any of the Cerb-family devices, Cerberus, Cerbuino, Cerb40 and Cerbot. This change also significantly improves performance.
The FEZ Game-O Firmware!
FEZ Game-O inherits the Cerb-family firmware, meaning it also supports the same direct internal graphics we mentioned above. This allows you to draw on the display very easily in its default mode, 160x120. We also added a DLL that provides direct access to few internal methods to get the full 320x240 pixels.
Increased stability!
In this release, we covered some very difficult bugs, some for networking and some caused system crashes. While they may seem not so difficult, we spent long weeks working with the community on solving them. We thank the community for all the work they did to help us find and squish these bugs.
To be LCD or not to be!
We have decided to default the LCD pins on our System on Modules (SoM) to GPIO on power up. They only become LCD signals when setting the LCD configuration. This is a required change for those that use the pins as GPIOs. The down side is that you will not see anything on the display on first power up, until the display configurations are set, either through software or using the FEZ Config tool. This change has made it to G120 and EMX and will be incorporated in G400 in the next update.
G400 SD compatibility with ChipworkX
SD on G400 now works on the actual SD pins but also now supports SPI for backward compatibility with ChipworkX. Devices that run SD with ChipworkX module can now upgrade to G400-D and still be able to use SD without any changes. We recommend using the SD interface over SPI in all new designs.
The SDK versioning and previous releases!
We have a made few changes on the website to make it easier to find specific SDK versions and to make versioning easier. The SDK will be released in the form of 2013 R1 and when updated it will show 2013 R1 Update1. All versions will always be available at https://www.ghielectronics.com/support/.net-micro-framework/sdks
If you need to lock your setup to a specific SDK, you will only need the one link that points to the version you need, for example, this is a direct link to this release (add here) which also shows the release notes and known issues. Please note that your community-rank will limit your access to beta releases and updates. Major releases are open to everyone after logging in.
We hope all these free updates are satisfactory and we look forward to providing even more in the near future.