This was an amazing day! Scott Hanselman took time from his busy scheduled to spend it with the local South African developer community .
BrickPi and EV3 progress update
There has been some nice progress on the pure c# library for the EV3 Lego Mindstorm Brick from Lego and the BrickPi3 from Dexter Industries. The BrickPi is great as it adds loads of extra processing power and more importantly memory for the EV3 kit using a Raspberry Pi.
The library is for both Xamarin.IoT and Android Things. As soon as it’s ready I’ll post the source to GitHub. If there is interest, I can also spend some time and port the Android Things implementation to Java or Kotlin for Android Studio.
The ultimate plan is to use this in a Lego based robot as a play project, but the experimentation will form basis of an actual larger artificial intelligence project. It will also be hooked up to Azure IoT for the telemetry.
Happy IoT’ing
Azure and the Internet of Things at GXUGSA
Always fun to fly to Johannesburg and speak at GXUGSA. I hope it was useful.
I’ve made all content available.
Event: https://www.meetup.com/Gauteng-Xamarin-User-Group/events/241783761/
Presentation: https://github.com/apead/XUGSA/tree/master/12092017
Android Things Weatherstation (Android Studio): https://github.com/androidthings/weatherstation
Android Things Weatherstation (Xamarin): https://github.com/apead/Xamarin-AndroidThings-Contrib
MX Chip kit Twitter Shake-Shake: https://microsoft.github.io/azure-iot-developer-kit/docs/projects/shake-shake/
MX Chip orders available from DFRobot: https://www.dfrobot.com/product-1616.html
This session featured
Azure Functions
Azure Iot Hub
Azure Stream Analytics
Azure Machine Learning
Power BI
Android Things
MX Chip Azure Iot Kit
And other Iot platforms and devices (Arduino, Netduino, Raspberry Pi, Windows 10 Iot, Xamarin Iot)
Happy Cross Platform IoT’ing
Azure Cape Town – Azure and the Internet of Things
Last night was a fun evening of Azure Iot at the Azure Cape Town user group. Thanks to all for coming, I hope it was useful. The turnout was awesome!
I’ve made all content available.
Presentation: https://github.com/apead/XUGSA/tree/master/12092017
Android Things Weatherstation (Android Studio): https://github.com/androidthings/weatherstation
Android Things Weatherstation (Xamarin): https://github.com/apead/Xamarin-AndroidThings-Contrib
MX Chip kit Twitter Shake-Shake: https://microsoft.github.io/azure-iot-developer-kit/docs/projects/shake-shake/
This session featured
Azure Functions
Azure Iot Hub
Azure Stream Analytics
Azure Machine Learning
Android Things
MX Chip Azure Iot Kit
And other Iot platforms and devices (Arduino, Netduino, Raspberry Pi, Windows 10 Iot, Xamarin Iot)
Happy Iot’ing!
Lego Mindstorm EV3 with Xamarin Iot
There’s a lot of fun to be had here! Xamarin Iot deploying to a Lego Mindstorm EV3 from Visual Studio, isn’t that awesome?
I’m now off to make it do something more useful. I will write a full blog post about it afterwards, including instructions how to set this up yourself.
Have a great day!
Visual Studio: The one IDE to rule them all
This week there was some great news about .NET MF and the return of the Netduino!(http://blog.wildernesslabs.co/netduino-is-back/)
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.
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.
Happy Iot’ing!
Cross Platform Iot at CTXUG
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
The presentation can be found here: https://github.com/apead/XUGSA/tree/master/19072017
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 (I didn’t demo this, but it works too): 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
Cross Platform Iot at GXUGSA
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
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!