For the first time, there will be a Mini Maker Faire in Seattle on June 2nd and 3rd. Maker Faire is a family-friendly festival of invention, creativity and resourcefulness, and a celebration of the Maker movement. Of course, [Nwazet will be there and we'll have fun with interactive demos showing how to use electronic building blocks and interact with the the World.

See you there,

-Fabien & Bertrand.

We're pleased to announce our partnership with UAM Czech Republic, your European .NET Micro Framework Distributor for [Nwazet products. Be sure to check out UAM's outstanding product selection, which features many modules and accessories compatible with Netduino and Netduino Go! as well as mounting solutions and fasteners.

Netduino Go is designed for much more than toy projects, but one has to recognize that toy projects are fun and also great learning experiences. Today, I want to take you through the process of reproducing the behavior of a famous toy that you will surely recognize. That toy, that has helped many of us realize what poor motor skills we possess, has two knobs that control the horizontal and vertical coordinates of a pen that draws into the dust on the back of a simple screen. It’s a great mechanical device that is part of western culture.

Our version will use two potentiometers, a 320x240 LCD display, a button to erase the screen, and of course a Netduino Go.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could build your own stuff? Microcontrollers let you do that, but they usually require dealing with a lot of complexity and unknowns. If you’re a software developer, chances are you don’t really know how to use a capacitor, or how a transistor works, even though it is at the heart of all computers.

Well there is a way now to develop awesome hardware projects without knowledge of electronics, just by connecting modules together. Netduino Go is a platform that allows for that without constraining the types of projects you can build. Today the number of available modules is still limited (the platform was released only this month), but it is expected to grow fast.

In this post, I’ll introduce you to the platform, with the assumption that you know programming but not electronics.

Attention ARM users! Based on the DIsplaytech SDT028ATFT-TS, the Netduino Touch Display Module from [nwazet is now available! Designed from the ground up for Netduino GO! boards, the [nwazet Touch Display Module is a bright, fine-pitched, 2.8", 240 x 320 TFT LCD screen from Displaytech capable of displaying up to 262K colors and features a resistive touchscreen. Powered by an ARM Cortex-M3 processor running at 120 Mhz, our Touch Display Module is extremely responsive and ideal for building graphical user interfaces for your Netduino GO! applications.

This tutorial will walk you through the [nwazet Touch Display Module assembly procedure that we recommend following. When shipping out modules, we want to be sure that they will be safe during their transport. To this end, after testing each one, we pack the touchscreen in its OEM case, which provides the best protection.

Now that you have a Netduino GO! micro controller, you may be looking for a good way to break out the 10-pin IDC sockets on the main board in order to connect to a variety of devices that you may already own, or perhaps, you want to plug into a breadboard and start prototyping your own module or a cool new project?

In this article, I’ll visually describe the simplest method that I’ve found for breaking out sockets, which only requires a 'Dual Row 1.27mm Pitch 10-Pin Female Header to DIP-10 Adapter' and M/F jumper wires.

At last, after nearly five months of working on a secret project, I can finally talk about it!

Secret Labs has released a brand new breed of micro controller boards, the "Netduino GO!" series and it's a big deal. Why? It's simple: the GO! system of boards and smart peripherals enables anyone to dream up a device or a process and assemble it as if playing with electronic LEGO blocks. No soldering iron required, no deep understanding of analog / digital electronics and communication protocols needed: just bring your imagination, basic programming skills and you're on your way to building great things! This is the promise that Netduino GO! makes and delivers, by design. Unlike Gadgeteer, the Netduino GO! system has a single, universal socket type, designed to avoid incompatible connections that have the potential of damaging peripherals and main boards equally. In fact, it's (nearly) kid-proof ;-)

GO! scales out with project needs: peripherals can act independently of the main board and of each other. They can efficiently manage their  power requirements and communications, making it ideal for creating sensor networks and meshes. Naturally, GO! can also connect to the Internet.

Last tuesday I got a PIX-6T4 (Pix six-ty-four) gaming console. Before I got it I was a bit curious; how can a game with only 64 pixels be… well… built. My friend and the creator of the PIX-6T4, Fabien Royer and his colleague Bertrand Le Roy, wrote two games, “Meteors From Outer Space” and “Paddles”, but this didn’t convince me in the usability. I must say, I was a bit skeptic. Don’t get me wrong here though. It’s a nice soldering kit, and a good platform to learn to program for micro controllers, that’s a fact! But I didn’t see a possibility for games with an ‘FUN!’ factor.

Until Pete Brown (software developer) posted a game called “Sixty4Racer“. For me, this was the proof it had some real value, even after soldering and developing a bit.

Our Hardware Friday post returns us to the PIX-6T4, The PIX-6T4 kit is out..., and a Friend of the Blog, Pete Brown.

If you follow Pete, it probably won't surprise you to know he's gotten his hands on a PIX-6T4 and has shared his recent experience building the kit and writing his first "real" game for it.

After assembling my Netduino-powered PIX-6T4, I wanted to go and write a simple game. This post describes the construction of that game, including all source code.

Concept

When you have 64 monochrome red pixels, you need to keep the graphics simple. I decided on a game inspired by the classic Atari River Raid game. This is essentially a vertical scrolling game where you need to dodge obstacles with your boat. Variations included things like Spy Hunter on the C64 and many many others. Most of those games also involved shooting and enemies, but that's a but more complex than you can reasonably do on this board. I won't enable moving walls like Laser Gates, but I'll leave things open enough not to make it impossible to do that in the future. The game had to be small enough that I could figure out the API, and then design, code, and blog about it in a single evening after my kids went to bed The PIX-6T4 is fun, but I have way too many projects on my backlog to be able to devote any significant time to it (here's a taste: a ShapeOko CNC mill, an AVR MIDI->CV Converter, the final touches on the MIDI Thru Box, several MFOS Synth Modules, Several Gadgeteer Board Concepts, a Win8 XAML book, chapters to review in my Silverlight 5 book, and much much more). In fact, that was one of the big selling points of this device: simple gameplay and quick to develop for. Combined with the great library Fabien designed, and my past experience with Netduino and, more specifically, C#, and this should be an evening project.

I recently picked up a PIX-6T4 build by Fabien Royer (with games by Fabien Royer and Bertrand Le Roy). This is a 64 pixel, two joystick/button, monophonic sound hand-held game device based around the Netduino Mini from Secret Labs. You create games in C# using Visual studio.

Millions of Americans oppose SOPA and PIPA because these bills would censor the Internet and slow economic growth in the U.S.

Two bills before Congress, known as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, would censor the Web and impose harmful regulations on American business. Millions of Internet users and entrepreneurs already oppose SOPA and PIPA.

The Senate will begin voting on January 24th. Please let them know how you feel. Sign this petition urging Congress to vote NO on PIPA and SOPA before it is too late.