just want to take the time to say thanks to everyone who has been reading and commenting my blog, and also a big thanx to those who wrote me emails and asked questions regarding my posts :-)

Here is my New Years eve:

Rob Miles, aprofessor at the University of Hull, (and co-author to Embedded Programming With The Microsoft .NET Micro Framework) has released his C# teaching materials for free. It is available from here..

The book contains 185 pagesand covers everything from how to start with C# (like the basic languageconstructs) to how to create user interfaces, components and even how toencapsulate the logic of your application into business objects.

The firstthing to do is to download the .NET Micro Framework SDK (it is in versions from2.0 to 3.0) The 3.0 version requires you to register with your live id beforebeing able to download, but it is worth it. The 2.0 version does not work withVisual Studio 2008 (not yet!?) but version 3.0 does work.

When you have downloaded the .NET Micro Framework  all you have to do is execute the installer  andthe work should be done for you, all you have to do is follow the installationwizard.

And now the.NET Micro Framework is fully integrated with your Visual Studio, and you areready to start developing your embedded projects with .NET Micro Framework. Ifyou should run into problems, make sure that.

If youstill cannot get things to work, you are welcome to send me an email (viacontact link) or you can read from MSDN

The .NETMicro Framework brings the effectiveness of managed code into the world of embeddedsystems, by the means of using (among other things) objects to store thedifficult and tedious tasks of sending output/input to specific pins, and a wholelot more. I hope to give an insight into what the .NET Micro Framework is, andin later blogs provide you with exiting code examples of how I go about usingthe .NET Micro Framework to develop some cool applications on an embedded system. 

What is the .NET Micro Framework?

The .NETMicro Framework is a “bootable runtime”, which means that it provides a subset(a subset selected by Microsoft to provide most services that is needed to run embeddedapplications on small devices) of a full blown operating system (from now oncalled OS). This subset consists of resource management, execution control andI/O.  Having this subset, it allows the.NET Micro Framework to run directly on the hardware without the need of atraditional OS (although, it can also run on top of an OS) , this is achievedby adding things like interrupt handling, threading, process management, heapmanagement and other traditional OS functions, into the .NET Micro Framework.By creating a bootable runtime the services needed by the application areprovided through the runtime and framework, and directly to the application,and thereby being independent of a traditional OS (this abstraction level iscalled PAL, Platform Adaption Layer). This means that the .NET Micro Framework isrunning on an optimized small footprint (20-30K, core) hardware abstractionlayer (HAL) in place of a traditional OS.  

The core ofthe .NET Micro Framework is the CLR (Common Language Runtime), which is anoptimized managed code runtime.  The factthat the CLR supports managed code, allows for rapid development and for safeexecution of application code by the means of modern tools (Visual Studio .NET)and programming language(C#).

What tools can be used for developing with the.NET Micro Framework?

You canutilize the strengths of Visual Studio .NET 2005 (standard, professional, orteam suite) or 2008, to develop your applications. You do not even need anyhardware to run or test the code on (although the hardware is at some pointneeded to deploy your solutions to). When installing the .NET Micro Framework,the installer provides the needed resources to the Visual Studio environment,and it also provides you with an emulator to run your code against.

Download the .NET Micro Framework

What is the .NET Micro Framework targeting?

It istargeted against a new generation of less expensive and more power efficient 32-bitprocessors, where “Fastexecution” lets a process run in smaller duty cycles and thus spend more time in power-efficientsleep modes. (for complete specs. Please visit MSDN).

What’s next?

I will provide a small tutorial on how to get the Visual Studio environment up andrunning, but will not go in to much detail on that subject.

And then it’son to some code. I will setup an example of how to write a first program, and Iwill try to explain my thoughts to the best I can. I do know that things may sometimesseem unclear, and if there is some information, or something I haven’texplained well enough, please bring it to my attention and I will do my best togive a better explanation or provide you with more detailed information.