RSSFEZ Domino. I’m a fanboy
Mar 12
What’s open source, runs the .NET framework, and allows you to utilize all the power of Visual Studio .NET for embedded systems development?
The FEZ (Freakin’ EZ) Domino and it’s sibling, the Mini.
Now, that last part was as hard for me to say as it was for you to hear (or is it see?). I’m not a Microsoft fanboy by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I’ve earned my living for the last 5 years as a Linux system administrator — and I have no intention of ever returning to a Windows domain of my own volition. That said, there’s no denying the power of the .NET framework, C#, and the Visual Studio environment and their impact on rapid prototyping and development cycles.
Loyalties aside, the FEZ Domino is somewhat akin to an Arduino on the juice . In fact, the FEZ Domino even maintains pin compatibility with the Arduino so the drawer full of shields you’ve accumulated over the years won’t be going to waste. And, if your stepping up from a Parallax BASIC Stamp, then the FEZ Mini has you covered as a drop-in replacement for your old BS2 projects.
There’s nothing like a little competition, and that’s true in open source as much as in business. I don’t know when the FEZ Domino was released, but I’m glad elektor ran an article about the .NET Micro Framework in this month’s issue, or it may have continued to go relatively unnoticed in the hobbyist community.
And sure, you could argue about the merits of avr-gcc, or the flexibility of creating your own makefiles. But let’s be honest with ourselves for a minute. The Arduino (and clones), the BASIC Stamp, and the FEZ Domino aren’t really targeted at professional, manufacturing-grade engineers. They’re targeted at people like me an you. Yeah, you with the ThinkGeek t-shirt and Nerf gatling-gun hidden beneath your desk. People who like to explore technology, and to share their discoveries with the rest of the world. People who like to build, tinker, and Make, and to see their ideas come to life in the real world.
FEZ Domino just made it even easier to do just that.
Apr 01, 2010 @ 01:07:56
Wow, I like it a lot. Do you know if it is possible to do something like firmata with this? e.g. use a host pc to control i/o?
Apr 01, 2010 @ 01:12:30
I don’t see why not. You’d just have to modify the Arduino Firmata sketch to C# and .NET… the pinouts are the same for FEZ Domino and Arduino, so it should be trivial… but the FEZ Domino might be overkill for that type of thing. We’re talking about a device with a USB host controller and micro-SD card slot, and an 80MHz processor! Still, it might be useful to someone.