Lockup during Connect()

If you try to connect to a host on the network that doesn't exist, or just isn't responding, your thread will lock up until the host responses (which may be never). Although the .Net Framework theoretically handles all of this with no problem, the 4.2 version of the .Net Micro Framework is missing a number of important properties and methods. According to the documentation the normal way to hand…

Using the SD Card

The first thing to know about the SD card reader is that it is automatically mounted at startup.  If you try to use the SecretLabs.NETMF.IO.StorageDevice.MountSD() function you will get a System.NotSupportedException because you're trying to mount an already mounted storage device. The next thing you need to know is that the 4.2 framework does not support SDHC cards, which means that you are limi…

Project Won't deploy

If you get a pop-up when you deploy the project and it says "TinyCLR Error" in the title bar and the message reads, "The project must have either an output type of 'Console Application', or an output type of 'Class Library' and the start action set to a valid .NET MicroFramework application" You need to select the main/startup project.  To do this: Look in the Solution Explorer panel and rightcli…

The Plant Nanny - Part One

I have a plant in my office at work and when I got to work one Monday morning after a long weekend the poor thing was all droopy and sad looking.  That's when I got this crazy idea to build an automatic plant watering device.  In part one we'll take a look at the basic setup and do some monitoring.  BTW, you can buy a simple one on Amazon for about $30, but what fun would that be?                …