Alongside the development of the kit, a new book "Programming in Visual Basic and .NET Gadgeteer" has been written by Sue Sentance and colleagues at Microsoft Research to use alongside this new education kit.

25 schools across the UK are now piloting both the kit and the books in schools. These schools range from middle schools to secondary schools with sixth forms and also include three girls-only schools.  The schools are in England, Wales and Scotland, from Devon right up to Edinburgh!  The pilot will end at the end of February and the schools will report back on their progress with .NET Gadgeteer but initial feedback indicates that the students are excited to be using the kits and enjoying learning to program in Visual Basic. For most students on the pilot, they have no prior knowledge of programming. The projects that are developed in the book include a tunes generator, stop watch, traffic lights, burglar alarm, morse code generator and a game. Each chapter covers a different set of programming concepts in an incremental way so that students gradually build up their confidence in programming.

Chris Atkinson, from St. Bede’s School, one of the pilot teachers reported: “The kits are fantastic!! We are using them with our gifted and talented students who are really enjoying learning programming! Although the buzzer lesson was an interesting lesson with the noise! Great fun for the kids, practice and the students are developing a love of programming. We have now developed a programming group because of this.”

Tom Hendry, from Balerno Community High School in Edinburgh says: “So far the gadgeteering is going great - the third years have started to make their own improvements to the gadgets [in the book], and  the students will be starting to plan their own gadgets, which should lead  to some good ones …

More information about the materials for .NET Gadgeteer can be found at https://gadgeteering.net/learn . Electronic copies of the book can be downloaded from this site, or there is an option to order a free hard copy (whilst stocks remain).  The Gadgeteer kits for education can be purchased from GHI Electronics or various other electronic outlets.

Sue Sentance

For learning to program with .NET Gadgeteer we have developed our own book, which utilises the Fez Cerberus Tinker Kit made by GHI Electronics.

This book has lots of exercises to develop programming skills as well as the excitement of making real things with Gadgeteer!  Included are instructions for 10 projects including a burglar alarm, traffic lights, stop watch, binary counter, reaction game and morse code generator. The materials have been written for students from 14-19 learning to program in Visual Basic from scratch, but could be used with a younger age group with teacher support.

Download Learning to Program in Visual Basic and.NET Gadgeteer

Go to Answers to the exercises

You can download this book for free using the links above. We have some printed copies available please use the 'Book Request' form here (login required) to request a copy, no guarantee! (Please include Name & Shipping address)

From May 14th to 17th, a workshop on Tangible User Interfaces was conducted at the Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg, Austria. Taught by Daniel Leithinger, a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab, topics included basics of physical prototyping, sketching user experiences and an introduction to .NET Gadgeteer.

The group of workshop participants consisted of graduate students and researchers with prior .NET programming experience, who, after a lesson of modifying a simple stopwatch example, set out in teams to brainstorm their own user interface. Over the course of the next 2 days, 6 teams created prototypes of user interfaces with .NET Gadgeteer FEZ spider toolkits and sensors, various props, cardboard and 3D printed enclosures. The ability to rapidly build functioning user experience prototypes sparked a constant stream of hands-on user testing, ideation and iteration throughout the workshop.

On the final day, 6 prototypes where presented, an impressive feat of the participants and a testimony to the ease of use of the .NET Gadgeteer platform: 

Catch me if you can

To encourage physical activity, Eva Maria Schwaiger and Christian Grossauer demonstrate a shoe with built-in LED’s to support playing zombie tag throughout the workday.

https://vimeo.com/66544100

Smart Watch

The smart watch created by Florian Perteneder, Christian Rendl, Yan Xu, and Nobuhiro Takahashi notifies the wearer of the weather and incoming messages.

https://vimeo.com/66650638

Gesture Feedback Glove

Christoph Lipphart, Angelika Bugl, and Jakob Zillner demonstrate a glove to provide feedback for freehand gestures.

https://vimeo.com/66436279 

LED Floor Tiles

Michael Bauer, Gerald Hauser, Sarah Steininger envision future stores equipped with LED floor tiles to guide customers.

https://vimeo.com/66428802 

Activity Indicator

The activity indicator by David Lindlbauer, Kathrin Probst, Patrick Greindl mediates interactions between office co-workers through an actuated office wall.

https://vimeo.com/66424630

Smart Drinking

Mikhail Efimov and Jesús Espejo envision a water bottle that reminds people to stay hydrated.

https://vimeo.com/66547189

Facebook Photo Set:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.569349306442443.1073741825.112364425474269&type=1

Flickr Photo Set:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/30723019@N06/sets/72157633932642773/

Vimeo channel for all videos:

https://vimeo.com/channels/532238

As part of a .NET Gadgeteer hands on event at the Modern Jago in Shoreditch we were delighted to have Justin Wilson from Ingenuity Micro attend and show us how things are done (www.ingenuitymicro.com). He has designed and built an nice collection of .NET Gadgeteer modules and mainboards and expects to have them available shortly.

Justin has designed a multicolour LED module for .NET Gadgeteer, it is a 3 colour LED on a PCB with 2 Gadgeteer sockets. The module is nice as it is low cost simple and clean, and you can chain them together without the need for a co-processor on each module.

So the article title may be misleading, I really just got to assemble a module that Justin designed, rather than designing a new one. However after the assembly I felt I really had built something. (It was also amazingly good fun)

Read the full article here; https://stevenjohnston.co.uk/2013/05/30/i-built-my-own-net-gadgeteer-module/

The result was an entertaining mix of craft, design and technology.  The tutorials included the coding and building of a digital camera, complete with a specially designed cardboard case that you fold and slot the Gadgeteer modules into.

To read the full blog please go to;

https://tommydykes.com/archives/970

https://gadgeteer.codeplex.com/releases/view/105366

This contains a few new features:

Visual Studio 2012 support

This release supports Visual Studio 2012 (all editions including Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop) and as well as retaining support for Visual Studio 2010 (and express editions).

To use Visual Studio 2012, you need to use the latest .NET Micro Framework release, v4.3.  To use Visual Studio 2010, you need to use .NET Micro Framework 4.2 QFE2.

Application Wizard

Since the matrix of Visual Studio versions, .NET Micro Framework versions and .NET Gadgeteer mainboards is getting complex, we added an “application wizard” to simplify things:

This wizard will help you choose the right version of .NET Micro Framework for your mainboard, and also help with installation errors such as having the wrong version of .NET Micro Framework installed.

.NET Micro Framework 4.3 support (alpha)

This release includes Gadgeteer libraries compatible with .NET Micro Framework 4.3, enabling mainboard and module manufacturers to “forward port” their designs.  We designate this as “alpha” support because, unlike for the “stable” 4.2 and 4.1 libraries, the Gadgeteer API for 4.3 may still change, in response to feedback from the community or manufacturers.  As such, we have not released source code for the 4.3 libraries at this stage, though we will do so as soon as the API is “stable”.

Power estimates

We now provide a means for manufacturers to specify the “typical” and “max” power consumption of each mainboard/module, and show this data in the Visual Studio designer – right click on the design surface and choose “Power estimate” to see it.  We considered including details of how much power is provided by red modules, but this proves hard – e.g. it might depend on what USB supply is used.  Nonetheless, we hope this will help users with understanding and fixing “power bugs”.

Roadmap

We are working on a few advances for .NET Gadgeteer’s 4.3 API – first, the ability to “indirect” any socket type so that modules can provide sockets as well as consume them, and second, a refactor of the LCD configuration interface to address compatibility issues.  We are aiming for a quick turnaround (as soon as May!) for this, depending on manufacturers’ feedback.  The next release is planned to be the “stable” 4.3 release.

22 February 2013

At the end of a long day: workshop participants and helpers at TU/e

The biggest ever .NET Gadgeteer workshop was held at TU Eindhoven (TU/e) on 22 February. Around 60 participants of the Department of Industrial Design, including 11 staff members, participated in the 1-day workshop to widen the existing collaboration. To manage the large number of participants, two CS PhD students from Stuttgart University, Tilman Dingler and Thomas Kubitza, and one Design PhD student (and Scholar of the MSR PhD Scholarship Programme) from Northumbria University helped the Microsoft team throughout the day.

Afterwards Joep Frens, Assistant Professor in Department of Industrial Design at TU/e (TU Eindhoven) said;

“It was a great day. I have a feeling that everybody is going to use Gadgeteer for fantastic projects.”

Helpers:

· Tilman Dingler and Thomas Kubitza, PhD students at Stuttgart University

· Tommy Dykes from Northumbria University (see https://tommydykes.com/ MSR PhD Scholar working on “Supporting a ‘sense of home’ in care homes: an exploration of digital design with people living with dementia” https://tommydykes.com/sharing-experiences-in-old-age

· Steven Johnston (Technical PM for .NET Gadgeteer) and Jan Kucera (Gadgeteer intern)

Stuttgart has a community lead role for Gadgeteer, see https://blog.hcilab.org/gadgeteer/ describing the work at the HCI Lab at Stuttgart University (Prof Albrecht Schmidt).

Joep Frens, Assistant Professor in Department of Industrial Design at TU/e (TU Eindhoven)

“It was a great day. I have a feeling that everybody is going to use Gadgeteer for fantastic projects.”

The BETT Show is a major event in the Technology and Education calendar in the UK and attracts over 30,000 visitors each year. This year BETT was held in the ExCel arena in Dockyards in London.

.NET Gadgeteer was showcased at BETT on the AQA (Assessment and Qualifications Alliance) stand, thus attracting many teachers interested in delivering Computer Science in the curriculum. AQA are a leading awarding body in the UK, now offering a new GCSE Computer Science qualification for 14-16 year olds. Sue Sentance (pictured) was able to demonstrate to teachers how to build a digital camera and explain how .NET Gadgeteer can be used in the school curriculum. Sue has been working with AQA to help teachers learn about .NET Gadgeteer by also running training days across the UK (advertised here).

.NET Gadgeteer can be used within the school curriculum as it is motivating to be able to build devices, but also can be used to learn new programming concepts. .NET Gadgeteer can be used with Visual Basic .NET, already a popular language taught in school, and materials are being developed to support learning VB in school with .NET Gadgeteer at https://www.gadgeteering.net .

At the BETT 2013 show there were thousands of exhibitors, with a strong focus this year on the development of Computer Science within the curriculum, as well as the use of technology in the classroom. There were dozens of inspiring talks as well as workshops, seminars and training sessions. It was a great opportunity for .NET Gadgeteer to be presented at such an exciting event.

Sue Sentance

“Last week our Gadgeteer tour lead us to Berlin, where Prof. Gesche Jost heads the Design Research Lab at UDK Berlin. 6 designers and creatives came together for the 2-day workshop next to the waterside of the Spree. Interestingly, for the first time we had people with a major background in Design and Arts. Nevertheless, they mastered technical hurdles quickly and produced two impressive projects:

The Bus Ticker:

Bus ticker: Shows the next buses.

An analog display shows the arrival time of the next two buses for the nearby bus stop. Therefore, a server script was written that scraped the website of the Berlin traffic union (BVV) and returned the buses’ arrival times in a Gadgeteer-friendly format. A WIFI module connects to the server and sends the data to an OLED display. Two servos control the analog display telling users when it’s time to pack up, put on their shoes and run for the bus. Or when it’s simply too late.”

Read the full article: https://blog.hcilab.org/gadgeteer/2013/02/design-is-fine-workshop-at-udk-berlin/