Thank you everyone who attended my session at both DevConf Cape Town and Johannesburg I met so many awesome people during DevConf inside and outside of my session! Thank you for making DevConf 2024 the incredibile conference it was!
I’ve included the slides for those interested in building your own DIY Microscope, or something similar to help you with your own accessibility challenges. If you have an imaging device with some intelligence, there’s so many things you can do!
The project is using a Raspberry Pi 3B (4 and 5 works too). It is build using C# and .NET 8. The user interface is created using AvaloniaUI. There’s nothing better that Avalonia if you need to create small, incredibly fast user interfaces on Linux using .NET. I really recommend trying it out!
The backend is using Azure CosmosDB for storage. The MongoDB VCore Implementation. This is chosen for it’s vector search capabilities. Perfect for a conversational solution using OpenAI.
The whole premise of the talk was to inspire developers to think about using all these tech components in your toolbox. Both AI and IoT bits and use it for good. There’s so many solutions that could be created especially for accessibility, to make people’s life a little easier. This is also exactly why I created this Microscope, to solve my own accessibility problems when building IoT solutions. Think about what you could do!
Device Definition json file is in the github repository along with the source code. This can be imported into Azure IoT Central and the views generated.
I was inspired enough to dust off one of my older projects which included .NET MF and the Xamarin Monkey Robotics project. I then decided to consolidate and rearrange it with some of the newer stuff I’m playing with in the “Iot” space. It’s also an example of how Visual Studio can handle projects of all types, held together and fully “debuggable” within one solution. This seems like a good time to do this especially with the recent talks at the Xamarin User Groups in Cape Town (http://explorationspace.co.za/2017/07/20/cross-platform-iot-at-ctxug/) and Johannesburg (http://explorationspace.co.za/2017/07/12/cross-platform-iot-at-gxugsa/) on the topic.
Visual Studio Controller of Things Solution
I do still have to port all this to Visual Studio 15.3 preview 3 so I can have Xamarin Iot working in the solution as well.
Still a lot of on the list to do today, so I’ll end off here.
Last night was the Cross Platform Iot Session at CTXUG in Cape Town. The turnout was absolutely amazing! Thank you to all for coming it was a really fun evening!
Roger Weiss from Aliens kicked off with an overview of Windows 10 Iot Core and a few demos. These demos featured some awesome use of Microsoft Cognitive services and also some nifty voice controlled home automation.
It was then my turn. Unfortunately Chris van Wyk couldn’t make it this evening. 🙁
The session featured
Visual Micro for Visual Studio
Visual Studio Code with Arduino Extension which is now Open Source.
Xamarin Forms and Xamarin.Android with Android Things 0.41 Preview
The new Xamarin Iot preview for Linux based devices
Azure Iot Hubs
Devices wise
Raspberry Pi 3
Intel Edison
Raspberry Pi Zero W
Latte Panda and Arduino Leonardo
MXChip Azure Kit
Devices everywhere! Latte Panda, Pi With Android Things. NexDock
Last night was the Cross Iot Session at GXUGSA in Johannesburg. It’s always fun presenting all the Iot toys, but also what can actually be done with Xamarin and the rest of the Microsoft tooling.
It’s also not always clear that you can basically do anything you want with Xamarin, so always nice and exciting to showcase it outside the usual phone type scenarios.
Gert Talking Windows 10 Iot Core
The session featured
Visual Micro for Visual Studio
Visual Studio Code with Arduino Extension which is now Open Source.
Xamarin Forms and Xamarin.Android with Android Things 0.4 Preview
The new Xamarin Iot preview for Linux based devices
That was using Xamarin Iot on Visual Studio for the Mac (Preview). Xamarin Iot is also however available for Visual Studio 2017 on Windows (Preview 2.1) too. Below is the identical solution just running from Visual Studio 2017 on Windows. Have a look!
Visual Studio Iot Project Template
New Xamarin Iot Agent
Visual Studio in Action
Xamarin Iot on Raspberry Pi Zero
This is just a quick look at Xamarin Iot running on a Raspberry Pi Zero, this time on Visual Studio on Windows. More in-depth content coming soon!
This is a first look at the new Xamarin Iot functionality found within Visual Studio for Mac 7.1 Preview. I will dig much further into detail in future posts, but lets have a very quick look and it. I’m really excited about this addition to the already awesome Xamarin tooling!
New Iot Project Type
A new project type has been added for Iot. This project type or template will create the solution and project needed to run on the Iot device.
Manage devices option
What’s immediately apparent is the new run option for the Iot project type. There’s now a new item called “Manage Devices”
Iot device manager
The Iot Device Manager allows all the connected devices to be managed. This setup is very similar to the Mac Agent used for iOS development with the Xamarin Visual Studio for Windows extension, however it will display all the Linux based devices running on the network. In this case and screenshot it’s a Raspberry Pi Zero running Raspian (Jesse). Configuring the device will allow remote deploys to the device from your Mac. This will require a user name and password of a user on the Raspberry Pi. This user will be used to connect to the Raspberry pi via SSH. Also note, SSH needs to be enabled on the Raspberry Pi for this to work.
Executing remotely on device
Now you can start developing your Iot solution. What’s really awesome is, all the things you expect to work will just work. This includes break points and a full debugging experience. All this can happen wirelessly to a “headless” device.
The build and execution process is very similar to the Mac Agent when you do iOS development from Windows (Visual Studio) to a Mac. The difference in this case, it is from a Mac (Visual Studio) to a Linux instance (Raspberry Pi). On the very first execution, the mono run time will be copied over to the device. This will be used to execute the built app. The application itself and it’s “built code” is also synchronized with the Raspberry Pi. This compiled Iot app is then in turn executed on the device remotely.
Lets see it in action! Here is a simple example of the now standard Iot demo of a flashing LED, but running on a tiny Raspberry Pi Zero W. What’s really nice about this implementation is, it runs on devices that is not supported by other Iot platforms, like Android Things and Windows 10 Iot Core. It will run on the myriad of Linux based devices out there.
There is much more to show and tell. So there’s much more blogs to come on this topic! This will also include how Android Things and Xamarin Iot can work together to make cross platform Iot simpler.
