.NET – Page 2 – Exploration Space

Cross Platform Iot at GXUGSA

July 12, 2017July 12, 2017 apead

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.

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

Windows 10 Iot Core

Azure Iot Hubs

Devices wise

Raspberry Pi 2 + 3

Intel Edison

Raspberry Pi Zero W

Latte Panda and Arduino Leonardo

MXChip Azure Kit

The presentation can be found here: https://github.com/apead/XUGSA/tree/master/11072017

Android Things Weather Station Sample with Azure Iot Hubs: https://github.com/apead/Xamarin-AndroidThings-Contrib

Cross Platform Generic Xamarin Forms sample that ran on Phone, Android Things and Windows 10 Iot: https://github.com/apead/XUGSABuildAutomation

Xamarin Android Things Nuget: https://www.nuget.org/packages/Xamarin.Android.Things/0.4.0-devpreview

Xamarin Android Things Contrib Drivers: https://www.nuget.org/packages/Xamarin.AndroidThings.Contrib.RainbowHat/0.40.0-beta

Getting Started with Xamarin Iot: http://explorationspace.co.za/2017/06/21/xamarin-iot-comes-to-visual-studio-2017-on-windows/

MXChip Azure Kit: https://microsoft.github.io/azure-iot-developer-kit/

Android Things Starter Kit with Rainbow Hat: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/rainbow-hat-for-android-things

Android Things Contrib Drivers for Xamarin Sample Added

July 2, 2017July 3, 2017 apead

Last week I pushed the Xamarin version of the Google Contrib drivers to Nuget. I’ve now added a sample project, to illustrate how it all works. The sample also includes the use of Azure Iot Hubs.

The sample and the Xamarin components for Android Things Contrib can be found here: https://github.com/apead/Xamarin-AndroidThings-Contrib

The Google Contrib drivers provides for the following components:

Sparkfun ADC Block for Intel Edison – adcv2x
Apa102 RGB LED strip
Bmx280 temperature and pressure sensor
Push button over GPIO
Cap12xx capacitive touch buttons
GPS
Ht16k33 7-digit alphanumeric segment
Mma7660fc accelerometer sensor
PWM speaker/buzzer
Metadriver for the Rainbow HAT
Metadriver for the Sense HAT
Ssd1306 OLED display
Tm1637 4-digit numeric segment display

You can find more details on each can be found within the Android Things Github repo: https://github.com/androidthings/contrib-drivers

A great test of the contrib drivers is Pimoroni’s Rainbow Hat. https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/rainbow-hat-for-android-things The Rainbow HAT brings together a lot of the components mentioned above on one board. It’s provided with the Android Things Starter Kit so it’s a very good place to start. The first sample I’ve added here focus’s on this specific HAT.

I’ve added a Nuget package which contains the entire contrib library. The nuget is built on version 0.4 preview of Android Things It can be found on nuget.org: https://www.nuget.org/packages/Xamarin.AndroidThings.Contrib.RainbowHat/0.40.0-beta Something to note, it’s still a pre-release nuget package.

The sample added is based on the google Weather Station sample. It has one difference, it uses Azure Iot Hubs for cloud messaging.

Sample Functionality

Temperature Monitoring
Pressure Monitoring
Push Button (A) to swap display from Temperature and Pressure on the board display
Native UI for RaspberryPi to display weather based on air pressure
Telemetry sent from Android Things Device to Azure via Azure Iot Hubs
Message support from Azure to Android Things Device.

To uses the Iot hub in the sample, the DeviceId, DeviceKey and HostName of an Azure Iot hub will need to be provided. I will do a post specific on Iot Hubs to provide more detail on this in subsequent blog posts. These variables are set in the MainActivity.

 private bool _useHubs = true;   //  Set this to true to use Azure Iot Hubs

 _weatherDevice.DeviceId = "<Add Azure Iot Hub Device Id Here>";
 _weatherDevice.DeviceKey = "<Add Azure Iot Hub Device Key Here>";
 _weatherDevice.HostName = "<Add Azure Iot Hub Hostname Here>";

The sample uses Xamarin’s own 0.4 Preview nuget for Android Things: https://www.nuget.org/packages/Xamarin.Android.Things/0.4.0-devpreview

I’m in the process of creating more samples of the rest of the contrib library. I’m also packaging more third-party drivers from around the community into reusable Nuget packages for Android Things with Xamarin.

I’m also having a lot of fun at the moment with a version of these drivers, built from scratch to work with Xamarin Iot. We can then have these components (and Rainbow HAT) working on Linux devices which will of course be awesome!

Happy Iot’ing with Xamarin!

Xamarin Iot comes to Visual Studio 2017 on Windows

June 21, 2017June 21, 2017 apead

I recently had a quick look at Xamarin Iot. The post can be found here: http://explorationspace.co.za/2017/06/07/first-look-at-xamarin-iot/.

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!

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!

Happy Iot’ing!

First Look at Xamarin IOT

June 7, 2017June 7, 2017 apead

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!

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”

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.

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.

But for now: Happy Xamarin Iot’ing! 🙂

Xamarin MVP Award

April 28, 2017June 4, 2017 apead

I received this today, the Xamarin MVP Award!!! This is truly something special that I can now cross off from my bucket list. Thank you, so much Xamarin and the awesome Xamarin Community! So honored to be receiving this!

Thank you to all that made this possible. It is really really amazing to know that all the years of work that went into assisting and contributing to the Xamarin and Microsoft community, globally and in South Africa has been appreciated!

Thank you once again! And here’s to more community fun and enjoyment!!

Updated Installing Xamarin Cycle 9 side by side with Android Studio 2.3

March 5, 2017March 5, 2017 apead

Android Studio 2.3 released on 1 March. I recently created a guide to install Xamarin side by side with Android Studio 2.2.3 here.

The steps illustrated remain the same. The only difference is, the Android Studio 2.3 zip file (without sdk and installer) can be located here. If 2.23 was previously installed, migrate the 2.2.3 settings on first run of Android Studio 2.3. This will copy across the shared SDK location with the Xamarin installation.

Happy Xamarin Development!

MVP Award 2017

March 2, 2017March 5, 2017 apead

I returned home from the Cape Town Xamarin User’s group last night to find that I have just become a Microsoft MVP for the first time!!!

I am so honored to be receiving this award!! Thank you to all that made this possible. It is really really amazing to know that all the years of work that went into assisting and contributing to the Xamarin and Microsoft community, globally and in South Africa has been appreciated!

Thank you once again! And here’s to more community fun and enjoyment!!

CTXUG Monthly Meetup 1 March 2017

March 1, 2017March 6, 2017 apead

Tonight was a very fun evening at CTXUG (Cape Town Xamarin User’s Group). The two topics presented were Telerik UI for Xamarin and Lottie. The User Group was held at the MLab office at the waterfront which is a great place to have events!

Event URL: https://www.meetup.com/Cape-Town-Xamarin-Users-Group/events/237781504/

Telerik UI

“Telerik® UI for Xamarin by Progress is a collection of UI controls and functionalities that complement the default controls found in the platform. The controls offer many non-trivial scenarios out of the box, helping developers to implement polished UI with native-quality performance in their apps faster, shortening time to market. Telerik UI for Xamarin includes Xamarin.iOS wrappers, Xamarin.Android wrappers and Xamarin.Forms controls.”

I did the first talk this time on Telerik UI for Xamarin. It was great showing off what the component set could do, and everyone seemed inspired and impressed with what Telerik UI for Xamarin offers.

I do hope the free Telerik license recipients will be presenting the cool stuff they build soon at CTXUG!!! 🙂

Thank you to Telerik for all the giveaways!!

Speaker: Allan Pead

The slides for this can be found on github: http://bit.ly/2mGtt61

More details on Telerik UI for Xamarin can be found here: http://www.telerik.com/campaigns/xamarin-ui/telerik-ui-for-xamarin

Photos

Lottie

”

Lottie is a mobile library for Android and iOS that parses Adobe After Effects animations exported as json with Bodymovin and renders them natively on mobile!

For the first time, designers can create and ship beautiful animations without an engineer painstakingly recreating it by hand.”

Chris van Wyk (from Xamarin University) gave an amazing talk on the amazing animation framework Lottie. Everyone (including myself) was really, really impressed what Lottie can do.

Speaker: Chris van Wyk

More information about Lottie: https://github.com/martijn00/LottieXamarin

Photos

I hope to see everyone at CTXUG soon! <Update> The next User Group meetup is on the 29th of March. The topic will be Visual Studio 2017!!

Android Things GPIO Callbacks

February 26, 2017February 26, 2017 apead

Following the blog post to get you up and running with Android Things, Visual Studio and Xamarin. http://explorationspace.co.za/2017/02/26/using-xamarin-and-visual-studio-with-android-things/

Android Things has GPIO callbacks which are triggered on certain trigger events. This is great for event handling. I’ve added a sample to Xamarin bindings which illustrates this by means of a Grove PIR (Passive InfraRed) sensor much like what’s in your home alarm system. If we use that in conjunction with a buzzer, you have a primitive alarm system.

The source can be found here: https://github.com/apead/Xamarin-Android-Things

Gpio callbacks are classes implemented inheriting from the abstract class Gpio Callback. This call back is triggered on certain trigger types. This are set on the gpio pin with the settriggertype method.

EDGE_NONE: No interrupt events. This is the default value.
EDGE_RISING: Interrupt on a transition from low to high
EDGE_FALLING: Interrupt on a transition from high to low
EDGE_BOTH: Interrupt on all state transitions

 public class AlarmCallback : Com.Google.Android.Things.Pio.GpioCallback
 {
 public Gpio BuzzerPin { get; set; }

 public override bool OnGpioEdge(Gpio p0)
 {
 if (p0.Value)
 {
 if (!BuzzerPin.Value)
 {
 BuzzerPin.Value = true;
 Thread.Sleep(1000);
 BuzzerPin.Value = false;
 }
 }

 return true;
 }

 public override void OnGpioError(Gpio p0, int p1)
 {
 Log.Info("Alarmcallback", "Error");
 }
 }

The class has two methods to override. OnGpioEdge and OnGpioError. The OnGpioEdge method is called on a trigger event. The OnGpioError is called on an error.

This class is registered on the actual input gpio pin.


_callback = new AlarmCallback {BuzzerPin = _buzzerGpio};

_alarm1Gpio.RegisterGpioCallback(_callback);

Happy Android Things development with Xamarin!

Using Xamarin and Visual Studio with Android Things

February 26, 2017February 26, 2017 apead

Android Things is Google’s new IOT Android based platform. In essence it’s a slightly altered version of Android which can run on Iot type devices such as the Intel Edison and the Raspberry Pi3.

“Android Things lets you build professional, mass-market products on a trusted platform, without previous knowledge of embedded system design.”

Personally I’m not yet too impressed with Android Things. It is still very new and very raw and is lacking a lot of what you’d expect from an Iot platform. However, having finally a standard Android implementation officially from Google running on these devices has to be a good thing. The platform should just get better from here.

Running in Visual Studio using Xamarin

Of course being Android, Android Things works with Xamarin too. Using Xamarin will also be a benefit for all those awesome cross platform benefits it offers, like sharing your Iot code with your backend services, Android, Ios, Windows Phone, Windows 10, OSX, XBox and whatever other devices you’d like to be supporting in your solution.

Getting the devices to appear in Visual Studio is exactly as you’d expect. The devices will use the standard Android Debugging Bridge (ADB). Plugging in an Intel Edison via USB will be reflected as “Unknown Iot_Edison”. You can obviously also use the network debugging features of ADB. eg. adb connect <ip address> The device will then also be detected in Visual Studio. A Raspberry Pi will appear as “Unknown iot_rpi3”.

Using Xamarin is very simple. All we need to do is bind to the Android Things API Jar to be able to make use of all the features provided by the Android Things SDK. At this moment in time there isn’t an official release Nuget package from Xamarin to do this. It is however very simple to do this yourself. In this sample (and I’ve shared the code on GitHub) I’m binding to the new Dev Preview 2 API for Android Things (androidthings-0.2-devpreview.jar). Once the binding project is referenced from your Android Things project, everything will work as expected. Just of course with the benefit of using C# and not Java!

I’ve created some samples based on the Standard Android Things Samples

Samples: https://github.com/apead/Xamarin-Android-Things

Blink Led

No Iot sample and demo is complete without a blinking LED. This sample is a conversion of the Android Things sample.

Simple UI

This sample is a simple illustration of using a UI on an Android Things device. It also illustrates GPIO pins and how to set the high/low values of the pins.

Learning Resources:

SDK Samples: https://developer.android.com/things/sdk/samples.html

How to install Android Things on your Device: https://developer.android.com/things/preview/index.html

A great article on the basics of electronics and hardware: https://riggaroo.co.za/android-things-hardware-basics/

Happy Android Things Development with Xamarin!