Tampa IoT Society – and the start of a new era

This morning before I started my client work, I took a few minutes to configure my highly customized Intel Galileo board and was able to successfully run Windows on a Very Small device.  I’ve order some really cool parts from SparkFun that I hope to integrate with the board over the weekend. 

Also – today I am announcing that I am formally rebranding the Tampa .NET Microframeworks Group as the Tampa IoT Society. Our next meeting August 19st  will be dedicated to going through how to get started and what you can do.  I’ll also be sharing and discussing our vision of what we will be looking at for the next 12 months.

-twb

Controlling a Netduino Robot with BlueTooth

For our April meeting, we will be controlling our Home-Built robot with a Windows Phone device, this should fun so hang on!

We will be using this Bluetooth Module

http://www.amazon.com/Arduino-Wireless-Bluetooth-Transceiver-Module/dp/B0093XAV4U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395938505&sr=8-1&keywords=Bluetooth+module

And the following USB Serial Port Adapter

http://www.amazon.com/SunFounder-Arduino-Program-Download-Mega2560/dp/B00GD6GE6O/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1395938602&sr=8-10&keywords=USB+232

First thing we need to do is configure our BlueTooth Module.

1) Power your Bluetooth Module with your Netduino

VCC –> +5V (Netduino)
GND –> GND (Netduino)

2) Connect your BlueTooth module to your FTDI Serial Adapter

FTDI  Netduino   BlueTooth Module
GND   GND
TX                          RX
RX                          TX

3)  Open up Device Manager, and identify the serial port that is associated with your FTDI adapter, in my case it’s COM16, yours will probably be something like COM4.  A good way to identify your adapter is to unplug, then plug it back in.  The one that disappears and reappears is probably the one you want to look at.

3) Download and start RealTerm

4) Configure the initial baud rate of 9600 on the “Port” tab, then press “Change” and “Open”

5) Confirm that your port is open and the correct baud rate is set at the bottom of the screen

6) If all that looks good, then we can start to configure our BlueTooth module, commands need to be sent very quickly.  The best way to do this is open up Notepad or some other mechanism where you can enter text and then cut and paste it.

a) Open Notepad
b) Type AT
c) Copy those two characters on to the clip board by highlighting them and hit CTRL-C
b) Right mouse click in the terminal area in RealTerm, and click on “Paste to Port”
c) If all goes well you should see OK

7) Once you know you are connected, enter the text AT+NAMEXXXXXX in notepad, where XXXXX is the name how you want to identify the bluetooth device.  No CRLF at the end.   Then copy those characters and paste them into RealTerm.

8) Then set the PIN by doing the same thing with AT+PINXXXX where XXXX is the 4 digit PIN used to pair with the device. IMPORTANT NOTE: If you use a PIN code like 1234, or 0000 your phone may try to auto-pair with that value.  To get it to work successfully in your app you will need to enter a more non-traditional code, and then manually enter the PIN code via BlueTooth settings.

9) Once you have completed your screen should look very similar to the following.  Your settings will automatically be saved to the device and you can continue by connecting it to your Netduino.

Connect the BlueTooth module to Netduino

10) Now you need to connect your BlueTooth module to your Netduino, you can remove the wires from the USB FDTI and connect them to the Netduino.  See PDF here for a better view of your Netduino

BlueTooth Module  Netduino COM1
RX                              PIN 1 (TX) - D1
TX                              PIN 0 (RX) – D0
VCC                           +5V (from before)
GND                           GND (from before)

11) Next up is to connect to your BlueTooth device from your Windows Phone 8.  You will have to use an actual device, not a simulator.  Hopefully you know how to do this, but click on Settings->BlueTooth, make sure it’s turn on, and find the name of your bluetooth module.  Make sure you enter a PIN code, if it automatically pairs you may have used a known PIN such as 0000 or 1234, try something different in step #8 above.

12 After you have paired your device, download the following Windows Phone 8 application and make sure you can compile it and run it on your device.  Make sure you change the name of the device in MainPage.xaml.cs to match the name of our BlueTooth Device

13) Then download the .cs file that has the code, to insert into your .NET Microframeworks project, the code is very straight forward, just cut and paste the appropriate parts into your application.  Also, just populate the code in your project to make the inputs from your phone actually do something.

 

At this point, your little app should be ready to run!

 

14) Next download the Windows Phone 8 project.

Enjoy

-twb

.NET Microframeworks Group and Windows Phone/Windows Store Apps

In our continuing serious on building an autonomous vehicle, in April we will let you robot start talking to the real world!

On April 15, I’ll be doing a session on demonstrating how to remotely control and talk to your robot from a Windows Phone and Windows Store application by adding a Bluetooth module to you robot.  And then setup some very basic protocols to control your robot with a Windows Phone and Windows 8 application. 

You'll be able to get the Bluetooth device from Amazon: 

http://www.amazon.com/Arduino-Wireless-Bluetooth-Transceiver-Module/dp/B0093XAV4U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395938505&sr=8-1&keywords=Bluetooth+module

To use this Bluetooth module, you'll need to configure it, to do so, you'll need some sort of USB to Serial Port Connector such as:

http://www.amazon.com/SunFounder-Arduino-Program-Download-Mega2560/dp/B00GD6GE6O/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1395938602&sr=8-10&keywords=USB+232

You can sign up at:

http://www.meetup.com/Tampa-Bay-NET-Microframeworks-Developer-Group/events/173765942/

-twb

Next Tampa Bay NETMF Meeting/Rise and Fall of NiVek QC4

For all of you that experienced the violent death of NiVek QC4 at the last NetMF meeting, I’m happy to report that with a fresh set of propellers, all the systems checked out and I’m ready to tempt fate again with all fingers still attached.

Our next meeting is scheduled for Thursday March 28^th at the Microsoft Office with social/dinner starting at 6PM and formal talks starting at 6:30. Topic looks really interesting, Joseph Bisaillon, Lloyd Sparkes, Jordi Lucero, and Sean Dunford will be discussing “Zeo Mobile Sleep Manager” and the possibilities of lucid dreaming…I’m NOT going there! Randy will also being doing an intro to using a logic analyzer to build on some of the concepts that Tim started in the last meeting.

http://www.meetup.com/Tampa-Bay-NET-Microframeworks-Developer-Group/events/104804932/

I think starting in the April/May timeframe there has been a considerable amount of interest in Home Automation, we might try to start focusing our efforts on that and get back to the hands on approach we started in the first few meetings so start saving up for some hardware! Once we get a little closer, I’ll start putting together some shopping lists.

I promise no un-controlled flight of my quad…well at least I’ll do my best to get the 1’s and 0’s in the right order and test it a little more beforehand =D

-twb

Netduino Serial Demo Sample

Last month we ran out of time in our meeting before I could finish up my serial data demo.  At that time I promised to get some sample code out there…all I can say is I’ve been very busy and better late than never.

The demo program I created which was called SerialIODemo is a very simple mechanism to send commands and arguments from the desktop down to the Netduino via a via a FTDI USB Serial port.

Connecting the two is very simple, just run wires as follows

BLACK  FTDI->GND to Netduino GND
GREEN FTDI->TXD to Netduino 0 (On the Digital I/O bank)
YELLOW  FTDI->RXD to Neduino 1 (On the Digital I/O bank)

Then of course you’ll need to connect both of these to your computer via USB.  The following picture should give you a good idea of how this should look.  Note the green wire is in the pin closes to end of the connector.

Fully Connected

Connection to FTDI

Connections on Netduino

After you have made your connections and plugged in the USB connections to your computer, you’ll need to check the Serial Port the FTDI is connected to. this can be done via the Device Manager under ports.  In my case, I’m on COM1

You’ll need to modify the code to connect to this port (TODO: Could have this configurable through the UI).  This needs to be done in MainWindows.xaml.cs in the DesktopApp project

Once you’ve done this you should be ready to go!

To use the app, simply make sure both programs start.  This can easily be done by right mouse clicking on the solution node SerialIODemo and setting both projects to startup.

Now start your program, give the Netduino a few seconds to warm up and press Connect.  When you do so, the Netduino should respond back as in the screen below.  If you don’t see this give the Netduino a little longer to start.

Extending the App

The idea behind this application is to invoke different commands by sending a string from the computer to the device.  The string will be in the format “command=arg”.  A switch statement in the device code will handle different commands and the args can be used to make those commands work with different “stuff” on the device.

Hope this gets you started on controlling your Netduino with your computer!

-twb

December Tampa Bay NETMF Meeting and Hackathon

When: Meeting - December 20, 6PM-8PM, Hackathon December 21st, 9AM-?
Where: Tampa Microsoft Office, 5426 Bay Center Dr. Suite 700, Tampa FL, 33609

Monthly Membership Meeting

This December we are going to turn our focus to having your small embedded device such as a Netduino communicate to the the Internet.  We will also be looking at the Electric IMP.  Something on the very cutting edge, but also something very cool!

This months geek shopping list

1) Electric Imp and Dev Breakout Board
2) Netduino Plus 2 or Ethernet Shield (Ethernet Shield will attach to your standard Netduino and will require a bit of hacking to get working.  We probably won’t be covering this in our meeting)
3) WiFly and XBee Shield add WiFi to your Netduino, again we won’t be covering this in the meeting but isn’t that difficult to connect and configure.  I’d be happy to answer any questions on this via Email.
4) Pen Type Multi-Meter really helpful once you really start getting into this stuff.

To register for this event, please click here.

NETMF Hackathon

In addition, as a bonus this year, Bill Reiss and I are going to be hosting the Tampa Winter Games and NETMF Hackathon all day on Friday December 21st at the Microsoft office in Tampa.  As we have seen in our nightly meetings, two hours is just enough time to get started with this stuff.  Why not make a full day of it and hang out with some like minded folks getting your “geek" on.  The format will be a couple of talks to kick the day off, you’ll get to hear Bill (great speaker!) get you going on developing games on the Microsoft Platform.  I’ll also give a brief talk on something cool that runs on a very small processor.  Then throughout the day, we’ll have a series of lighting talks to cover small bits and pieces of both gaming and microelectronics.  The primary intent of these events are really just to hang out and work on some cool stuff, along with your peers that might be able to help you if you get stuck on certain areas.  I’ll probably be working on my NiVek QC1 along with some cool new 32 bit hardware and my Windows 8 Ground Station. 

I’ll bring my collection of Netduino Shields and other assorted electronics for folks to play with.

To register for this event click here.

Both events should be a blast, hope to see you there! 

-twb

Tampa Bay NETMF Hacking Group

Announcing Meeting Number 2 of the Tampa Bay NETMF Hacking Group.

To register for the event, please go to http://tbnetmf1211.eventbrite.com

Our second meeting will also be held at the Microsoft Office in Tampa on November 21st at 6:30 PM.  This meeting will be in two parts, the first part going from 6:30-8:00 and will  be lecture/hands on.  The second part will be Show-and-Tell as well as freestyle hacking on your hardware.  If you did something cool between the meetings, come prepared to share!

After a brief recap/intro for any new members, this meeting we will explore basic communications and digital signals with your Netduino .NET Microframeworks device.  Although we will be using a NETMF device the same basic principles will apply to other microcontrollers

• Serial Data Communications to a Host Computer
• Serial Data Communications between two NETMF devices
• Controlling a Servo

Here’s a relatively cheap shopping list of parts to help support your geek habit that will be useful for this meeting:

• Netduino – ~$35.00
• USB to Serial Adapter – ~$15
• Breadboard Jumper Wires – ~$5
• Servo – ~$15
• Breadboard – ~$5 (optional)
• +9V Power Supply ~$7 and +5V adapter ~$10 (optional but will allow your Netduino to run stand-alone)
• Misc. Electronic Components (optional, includes jumper wire and breadboard) ~$13
• Misc. Electronic Components – Mega-Pack! (optional, includes jumper wire, breadboard and a ton of other stuff) ~$23
• Saleae Logic USB Logic Analyzer (very optional, but very cool) – ~$150

Next month, we will be exploring options for getting these small devices on the internet.  Then in January, we will be looking at the Arduino.  Anyone with experience with this want to present?

Hope to see you there!

-twb

Tampa Bay – .NET Micro Framework Development Group

Today I’m announcing the first meeting for the Tampa Bay – .NET Micro Framework Development group on Thursday October 18th, 2012 at the Microsoft Office in Tampa.

If you’re interested in learning more about controlling hardware for software, even if you have no experience, please join us!  You can read more about the .NET Micro Framework.
These will be the primary goals of the first six months or so of the meetings (which are open for discussion):

• Setting up development environment, the hardware and software you will need.
• Very basic digital electronics, how to flash an LED, how devices and components talk together.
• Communicating with a Windows 8 and Windows Phone front end.

These meetings will be part “lecture” where we’ll discuss some basic concepts and potentially do some hands-on exercises as well as “show-and-tell” that will let folks do quick demos of fun stuff they are working on.
To start out with, we will be working with the first generation Netduino, so if you are interested in hands-on participation, you might want to order one of these before coming to our meeting.
Even if you have zero experience, but have an interest in this kind of stuff, please come and join us!  It really is an awesome experience bringing hardware to life with the software you write.
RSVP Now
-twb