First Look at Xamarin IOT

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.

 

But for now:  Happy Xamarin Iot’ing! 🙂

 

Running ASP .NET vNext on a pcDuino

Microsoft is doing a lot of great things at the moment.  One of these is the ability to run ASP .NET vNext away from a Windows Server, and away from IIS.    Being a ASP .NET Mvc developer for a few years now, the idea to run on any environment is quite liberating.

 

A pcDuino is a device with tons of potential.   It’s a powerful device and it really is a full “mini PC” with enough processing power to do interesting things like image processing.    But is small enough to be used in situations where you would uses an Arduino, Netduino, RFduino etc in the IoT or maker space.   The pcDuino also has an Ethernet port and on-board WiFi, so it is a rather compelling internet connected device.

Having deployed Mono on my board already, it was also a no brainer to extend that and to explore the potential of an internet connected device but leveraging ASP .NET vNext to do that.

 

asp net web server

ASP .NET Web Server (with Arduino Uno and Xamarin Monkey used for scale)

 

 

To get started read these two blog posts:

 

Now that we have both Ubuntu and Mono installed, we can now begin getting ASP .NET vNext up and running.

To figure out how to do this, I referred to the ASP .NET github repository, “Getting Started” page.  This page can be found here:  https://github.com/aspnet/Home

 

Lets start by installing the necessary certificates.

$ CERTMGR=/usr/local/bin/certmgr
$ sudo $CERTMGR -ssl -m https://go.microsoft.com
$ sudo $CERTMGR -ssl -m https://nugetgallery.blob.core.windows.net
$ sudo $CERTMGR -ssl -m https://nuget.org
$ sudo $CERTMGR -ssl -m https://www.myget.org/F/aspnetvnext/
$ mozroots --import --sync

 

We need curl, so install that next

$ sudo apt-get install curl

 

Download and execute the KVM installer on the ASP .NET site.   As of writing this,  the master branch has the 1.0.0-beta1, so we will use that.

$ curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aspnet/Home/master/kvminstall.sh | sh && source ~/.kre/kvm/kvm.sh
$ kvm upgrade

 

Check to see if the installation is correct, you should see the version number reflected with the list command.

$ kvm list

 

If git is not already installed, install git next.

$ sudo apt-get-install git

 

The web server ASP .NET vNext uses (Kestrel), is based on Libuv, so we need to install that next.

$ git clone https://github.com/libuv/libuv.git
$ cd libuv
$ sh autogen.sh
$ ./configure
$ make
$ make check
$ sudo make install

 

Now we need something to run.  Lets use one of the samples from the ASP .NET github repository.for simplicity.  Clone the aspnet repository.

$ git clone https://github.com/aspnet/Home

 

Focusing on the Mvc example, change to the directory “HelloMvc”.    To resolve and download the necessary dependencies for the project, execute a restore command on the package manager “KPM”.

$ cd Home/samples/HelloMvc
$ kpm restore

 

We need to set up a symbolic link for libuv to avoid any “Object Reference not set to an instance of an object” errors.    This is not the most helpful or informative of error messages, but we get what it means.

 $ ln /usr/local/lib/libuv.so -sf ~/.kpm/packages/Microsoft.AspNet.Server.Kestrel/1.0.0-beta1/native/darwin/universal/libuv.dylib

 

Run the Kestrel server

$ LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib k kestrel

 

If all goes well you should see “Started” appear on the command line.

$ Started

 

The default port for kestrel is 5004.   As a test navigate to “http://localhost:5004” using the internal pcDuino Chromium browser.     The sample ASP .NET Mvc application should appear as below.

 asp .net vnextAsp .NET Mvc site up and running on Mono 3.12.0

 

Find the ip address of the pcDuino using the ifconfig command.

$ ifconfig

 

Use this ip address from a remote device (or pc’s) browser.   The great feature of the pcDuino that it is equipped with both an Ethernet port and WiFi so connectivity is very easy and convenient.

 

Congratulations you now have a Mono / NET powered IOT device running ASP .Net vNext!   A mobile wireless web server / web connected device has endless potential.   In future blog posts I hope to explore some of those.

 

I hope this was helpful!

Mono Compilation on a pcDuino

Being a C# .NET developer and a Xamarin developer, it was just a matter of time before I had to have Mono on my pcDuino.    A default package installation of Mono on any ARM (ARMhf) device (like the pcDuino with it’s A20 processor) at this moment is unfortunately not possible as it’s not available yet.  However luckily Mono can be compiled directly on the pcDuino.   I’ll share my exploration of building Mono 3.12.0 here.

Attempting to install the current Mono packages on a system with an ARMhf processor will currently yield the following unfriendly error messages:

sudo apt-get install mono-devel
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
mono-devel : Depends: mono-runtime (>= 2.10.1) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-cecil-private-cil (>= 3.12.0) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-cecil-private-cil (< 3.12.1) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-codecontracts4.0-cil (>= 1.0) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-compilerservices-symbolwriter4.0-cil (>= 3.6.0) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-corlib2.0-cil (>= 3.2.8) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-corlib4.5-cil (>= 3.12.0) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-peapi2.0a-cil (>= 3.2.8) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-peapi4.0a-cil (>= 3.2.8) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-relaxng4.0-cil (>= 2.10.1) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-security2.0-cil (>= 3.0.6) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-security4.0-cil (>= 3.0.6) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-system-componentmodel-composition4.0-cil (>= 3.0.6) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-system-componentmodel-dataannotations4.0-cil (>= 3.2.3) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-system-configuration-install4.0-cil (>= 1.0) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-system-configuration4.0-cil (>= 1.0) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-system-core4.0-cil (>= 3.2.8) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-system-data-linq4.0-cil (>= 1.0) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-system-data2.0-cil (>= 3.12.0) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-system-data4.0-cil (>= 3.12.0) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-system-numerics4.0-cil (>= 1.0) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-system-runtime-serialization4.0-cil (>= 1.0) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-system-runtime4.0-cil (>= 2.10.1) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-system-security4.0-cil (>= 1.0) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-system-servicemodel4.0a-cil (>= 3.2.3) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-system-web-services4.0-cil (>= 1.0) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-system-web2.0-cil (>= 2.10.3) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-system-xml-linq4.0-cil (>= 3.0.6) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-system-xml4.0-cil (>= 3.12.0) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-system2.0-cil (>= 3.12.0) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-system4.0-cil (>= 3.12.0) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono2.0-cil (>= 3.6.0) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: mono-mcs (= 3.12.0-0xamarin3) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: mono-gac (= 3.12.0-0xamarin3) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: mono-xbuild (= 3.12.0-0xamarin3) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-cil-dev (= 3.12.0-0xamarin3) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmono-2.0-dev (>= 3.12.0-0xamarin3) but 3.2.8+dfsg-4ubuntu1 is to be installed
Recommends: mono-csharp-shell but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

 

To solve this problem we will make our own ARMhf targeted build. Let’s start by finding a USB memory stick or a SD card with sufficient space.   The Mono source repository is quite large and it occupies about two gigabytes of storage. I would suggest a size of four gigabytes or more (I used an eight gigabyte module myself).  Make sure it’s formatted to the Ext file system.  FAT32 will not work for compilation.  I wasted a good couple of hours with error messages caused simply by the chaos caused using the wrong file system.

 

To figure out what to do, I referred to the official Mono documentation for the installation steps I list below.   These compilation instructions can also be found here on the Mono site:  http://www.mono-project.com/docs/compiling-mono/linux/

 

Let’s first make sure we have the tools available to build Mono.

 

$ apt-get install git autoconf libtool automake build-essential gettext

 

Clone the Mono source code from the git repository.

 

$ cd /media/[path to your external media]
$ git clone git://github.com/mono/mono.git

 

The cloning of the Git repository can take a while depending on the internet connection.   The size of the repository is just under two gigabytes so try to be patient.

 

The entire process of compilation will take about five hours on the pcDuino, so best to do this overnight..

$ cd mono
$ git checkout mono-3.12.0-branch
$ git submodule init
$ git submodule update --recursive
$ git submodule

$ ./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr/local --with-sgen=yes --with-large-heap=yes --with-xen_opt=no --enable-parallel-mark --with-libgdiplus=/usr/local/lib
$ make get-monolite-latest
$ make EXTERNAL_MCS="${PWD}/mcs/class/lib/monolite/gmcs.exe"
$ make

Build in progress!

 

monocompiling

 

Compiling is complete!  So to conclude we will install the build locally.

$ sudo make install

 

Once installed check the Mono version.

$ mono --version

 

If you are seeing the message below, congratulations you have successfully built Mono 3.12 on your device!

Mono JIT compiler version 3.12.0 (mono-3.12.0-branch/501f5a9 Mon Feb 2 12:41:29 UTC 2015)
Copyright (C) 2002-2014 Novell, Inc, Xamarin Inc and Contributors. www.mono-project.com
TLS: __thread
SIGSEGV: normal
Notifications: epoll
Architecture: armel,vfp+hard
Disabled: none
Misc: softdebug
LLVM: supported, not enabled.
GC: sgen

 

For the non-adventurous or if you are just needing to save time, you can download my Mono-3.12.0 package here:  http://1drv.ms/1zvLtgN

 

Now that we have mono installed we can explore some pcDuino .net (c#) related topics in future posts.