I regret every buying the fez spider and all these modules I cannot express how much displeasure I have experienced. It has been nothing but problem after problem. For anyone thinking about buying a product from GHI you are better off going with the netduino.
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@ eidolonsdream - sorry you feel this way about the GHI products but you are bloody delusional if you think you will have a better time with Netduino, just ask the Go and Agent users.
In my not so humble opinion GHI are the leaders in the NETMF market by a country mile - their support is first class so I am very surprised with your comments as your 2 other posts doesn’t sound like someone giving it a fair go, but hey…we are all entitled to our own opinions.
Enjoy your Netdunio paperweights.
Regards
Bill
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@ eidolonsdream - your satisfaction is very important. Take a look around the forum, the very active forum, and you will not see many unsatisfied users. We are available for any help you need but feel free to return your order if you prefer, sadly.
@ Bill Gates - thanks for backing us up.
I am genuinely surprised. I sold all my netduino stuff after a few years of issues there, using that platform. I wish them success and do hope they succeed eventually but I have to agree that ghi’s support and responsiveness is light years ahead. I don’t even think nwazet works with them anymore either. And the whole netduino “go” and “agent” episodes angered many people.
@ eidolonsdream - I happily take your Spider and modules. 
There have been bumps in the road over the years but GHI has always worked hard to sort them and they have top notch gear.
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Sorry to hear that your Gadgeteer experience has been vastly different then mine, what city are you located in as maybe some can give you a hand.
@ eidolonsdream - As someone who is directly responsible for customer satisfaction and the lack of posts I could find for your user profile, could you tell me about some of the problems that you have faced? Thank you for the feedback.
I own car washes in Southern California. I do all of my own maintenance, plumbing, electrical, painting, everything. I purchased the spider so that it could act as a web server as I have lots of equipment it can monitor. I wanted to not only do this for my own business but also to make tutorials on how other car wash owners can use prototyping boards to improve their own operations.
I have tried to get the spider and the J11D module working to no avail.
I have tried these and several more.
http://blog.hcilab.org/gadgeteer/code-snippets/
https://www.ghielectronics.com/docs/30/networking
I have spent days going over and over these with no luck.
Before I can even begin to figure any of that out my spider will not let me deploy to it anymore. I’ll be honest I do like the sider better than the netduino but at least I can deploy to the netduino and I got it working as a web server in 5 minutes. I don’t want to use the netduino and I am impressed with Gary, Gus, and everyone else that replied. I can see there is a great community here and I will give this one last shot.
Before I can get into these web server tutorials I need to be able to deploy to the spider. The pins on it are in the correct position and I was able to deploy to it before no idea why it just stopped working. When I hit start in visual studio it starts deploying then just says ready again in the bottom left of VS. I hit start again it just does the same thing never actually deploys anything anymore.
@ eidolonsdream - More than likely you have deployed an application that has a tight loop that is not allowing VS the opportunity to deploy the new app. Please start by connecting to your Spider using FEZ Config then go to the “Deployment (Advanced)” tab and try pressing the “Erase application” button.
If you still can’t deploy after that then the next step is to re-install the bootloader. To do this, in FEZ Config go to Advanced -> Loader (Tinybooter) Update -> FEZ Spider and follow the directions there. Please do this and report back. Good luck!
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@ eidolonsdream - please allow us and the community to try to help. Sometimes simple things can seem like big problems, like in not having enough power. Have you tried using a powered hub or connecting a power pack?
There’s also the possibility of firmware not matching what you’re trying to deploy. Please try deploying again and then copy and paste the text in the “output” window.
GHI and community will help you debug the issue.
As a web server NETMF will all ways be fairly limited. It’s great as a simple tool for uploading to a cloud based server for instance, but not ideal for hosting pages directly.
@ eidolonsdream - I know your pain all to well. But take it from a 5 year vet: You’re better off with GHI’s products (by a long shot). There have been many times I’ve thrown stuff around the room (ghi’s products) and been like “screw this man”. However, there has always been a solution to the problems I’ve encountered.
Stick it out, you’ll see results.
I’ll second the powered hub suggestion, my desktop would occasionally drop connection with my Cerberus and I could not get it back, but plugging it into my laptop (with its higher powered ports) would work every time.
I will also second my support for GHI, I have worked with Netduino, and I can’t complain regarding it, but I have had better experiences with Gadgeteer.
Also, you have me curious, what are your use cases with a car wash? It seems like a cool endeavor to automate around it. Is it a wand-wash? I’d assume most of the automated car washes would have most of the desired automation already.
@ eidolonsdream - Can I ask what error you are seeing?
I’ve built Gadgeteer devices in the past which have used the built in web server so I thought I’d whip up a sample app for you. First reflash both the loader and firmware in your Spider to the latest release (just so we are using the same version with the same starting place).
Next while building my sample for you I ran into a known bug in the WebServer43 in the Responder.cs file which produced the following error:
see https://gadgeteer.codeplex.com/workitem/1861 which is discussed here https://www.ghielectronics.com/community/forum/topic?id=16330 including how to fix this.
I’ve bundle up a my sample app which includes the required changes and uploaded it to CodeShare here: https://www.ghielectronics.com/community/codeshare/entry/1052
GHI should prob start sending out products with business cards in them that say “Before you rage quit, check the forum”.
I tried erasing the application data, still could not deploy. I began updating the tinybooter but it fails. It displays a message, “Make sure GHI Bootleader Interface driver is installed. You will see a new Serial COM port was added under your device manager.”
I checked my device manager and the GHI boot loader interface is installing but not correctly this is the error I am receiving.
GHI Bootloader interface properties
This device cannot start. (Code 10)
{Operation Failed}
The requested operation was unsuccessful.
I tried uninstalling the driver, powered down the PC and tested other USB ports.
Cant diagnose and get the J11D module working because I cant deploy, cant update the tinybooter because the bootloader interface driver isn’t working.
I just cant help but laugh at this point XD
:wall:
@ eidolonsdream - Are you running Windows 7, 8, or 10?
@ eidolonsdream - where are you located?