About 2 years ago I was developing an interface for flight simulation software (via TCP/IP). I was using the USBizi based Panda II and .NETMF for this project, and utilizing a Wiznet W5100 for ethernet connectivity. My design used I2C as a bus for I/O for physical sim components (e.g. switch multiplexers, 7-segment drivers), and communicated with a PC-based 3rd party TCP server that served as a gateway for passing info to/from the 3rd party simulation software. I wrote my own PC configuration utility for my client device. Personal circumstances dictated shelving the product midstream. However I am now looking at restarting things.
However, now that USBizi is out of production, I am not sure of my best choice for replacing the Panda II. I’m looking for advice regarding hardware to migrate to. I’m considering the Fez Cobra II (Net) and the Fez Cerbuino Net, as they have built-in ethernet. I’m leaning towards the former due to its use of the premium library, and the possibility of using WiFi instead of cabling if I subbed the Cobra II WiFi. I’m hoping to minimize the amount of recoding I will need to do. Any suggestions / thoughts / other contenders to consider would be much welcomed!
@ petdocvmd - The Cobra II is a good choice. The networking interfaces were changed in MF 4.2, so a little work will be needed to update the network initialization code. Lots of samples available.
I believe the I2C support was moved from GHI library to MS library with 4.2. This will also need a few changed.
Should not be a major effort to move from Panda to Cobra II, unless the order of magnitude increase in memory is an issue.
@ Mike - thanks for the advice! Are the samples you have seen in the .NETMF 4.2 or 4.3 SDK? I’m not turning up anything useful Googling TCP, socket, etc and .NETMF 4.2/3. Similar results regarding I2C and 4.2/3.
All:
Am I able to use Visual Studio 2012 Express with .NETMF 4.3 as long as I target 4.2 in project properties? Or will I need the full version of VS2012?
Any [em]on hand[/em] links anyone has for example code would be great - not asking anyone to search for me I will of course DL the SDK and browse the docs and samples. Just wanted to see answer to Q1 above before choosing V2012/4.3 or V2010/4.2.
@ Mike - thanks for the advice! Are the samples you have seen in the .NETMF 4.2 or 4.3 SDK? I’m not turning up anything useful Googling TCP, socket, etc and .NETMF 4.2/3. Similar results regarding I2C and 4.2/3.
**** There are lots of sample code in the CodeShare section for networking. BTW, MF 4.3 is not supported by GHI at the current time. Should be available soon. For I2C check the MS 4.2 documentation.
All:
Am I able to use Visual Studio 2012 Express with .NETMF 4.3 as long as I target 4.2 in project properties? Or will I need the full version of VS2012?
**** Express versions works fine.
@ Mike - great - thanks! Will search codeshare. I just read through my old code on my Win7 laptop and saw that I had written the I2C classes for .NETMF, so at least that part should work or need only a little tweaking.
I will of course DL the SDK and browse the docs and samples. Just wanted to see answer to Q1 above before choosing V2012/4.3 or V2010/4.2.