Netduino was an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

electronics prototyping platform based on the .NET Micro Framework. It uses the ARM Cortex-M

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in a maximum of 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform la ...

RISC In electronics and computer science, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer architecture designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a comp ...

ARM processor core as a

ARM-

microcontroller A microcontroller (MC, uC, or μC) or microcontroller unit (MCU) is a small computer on a single integrated circuit. A microcontroller contains one or more CPUs (processor cores) along with memory and programmable input/output peripherals. Pro ...

. The Netduino boards (except the discontinued Mini and Go models) are designed to be pin-compatible with most

Arduino Arduino () is an Italian open-source hardware and open-source software, software company, project, and user community that designs and manufactures single-board microcontrollers and microcontroller kits for building digital devices. Its hardwar ...

shields. Applications can be built on Windows (with Visual Studio), or on Mac OS (with Xamarin Studio). The platform is similar in concept to the Arduino platform, but is generally more powerful and instead of writing applications in C/C++ or Wiring (essentially, C++ without header files), applications are written in C#, which brings powerful, high-level language constructs to the toolbox such as threading, event handling, automatic garbage collection, and more.

Development

Netduino was invented by Chris Walker, founder of Secret Labs. The platform was actively supported by Wilderness Labs and had an active open source community. Some time in 2020 Wilderness Labs discontinued Netduino and completely superseded it by Meadow, an STM32F7-based microcontroller board with .NET Standard.

Hardware

The Netduino family is based on the Cortex-M Micro Processor running the .NET Micro Framework (NETMF) v4.3. Development can be done on both Windows, with Visual Studio, or with Xamarin Studio on Mac OS X. IO includes 22 General Purpose Input/Output (GPIO) ports, 6 of which support hardware Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) generation, 4 UARTs (serial communication), I2C, and SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface Bus). The Netduino family consists of the Netduino 3, Netduino 2, and the original Netduino 1 lines. The original Netduino (1st generation) and Netduino Mini (also 1st generation), have been replaced by the much more powerful Netduino 2 and 3 lines.

Netduino 3

The Netduino 3 is based on a Cortex-M4 microcontroller running at 168 MHz with 384 KB of flash storage and 164 KB of RAM. Netduino 3 is offered in 3 different models, the N3 base model, N3 Ethernet model, and the N3 WiFi model; which vary by their internet connectivity mode and their code/flash storage size. All N3 models support persistent storage with SD cards up to 2GB. Both the Ethernet and WiFi models have a Micro SD slot built in to the board. The base model can use SD cards via most Arduino SD Card add-on shields. The N3 technical specifications are as follows:

Netduino 2

Netduino 2 is offered in 2 different models, the N2 base model as well as the N2+, which adds 10Mb Ethernet.

Discontinued Models

The original Netduino forum is archived and contains historical and technical information about the original Netduino boards and development.

Netduino 1

The original Netduino was based on an Atmel AT91SAM7X processor running at 48 MHz.

Netduino Plus

The Netduino Plus added an onboard

Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

port and a

microSD Secure Digital (SD) is a proprietary hardware, proprietary, non-volatile memory, non-volatile, flash memory card format developed by the SD Association (SDA). Owing to their compact size, SD cards have been widely adopted in a variety of port ...

card reader.

Netduino Mini

The Netduino mini was a smaller breadboard mountable Netduino in a DIP package.

Netduino Go

With Netduino Go, all the peripherals were virtualized, with 8 gobus ports replacing the Arduino headers. Additional modules could be added through these ports, and each module had a small microchip which works together with the mainboard.

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://netduino.com
Netduino at wildernesslabs.co
Open hardware electronic devices Microcontroller software Robotics hardware