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Overviews of the .NET Micro Framework

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[This documentation is for preview only, and is subject to change in later releases. Blank topics are included as placeholders.]

Architecture, global applications, managed drivers, web services, and SSL connections are a few of the many essential areas where understanding is crucial to a rapid and successful development of your .NET Micro Framework devices. This developer's guide gives you an overview of the Microsoft .NET Micro Framework.

In This Section

  • What is the .NET Micro Framework?
    Microsoft .NET Micro Framework is a powerful and flexible platform for rapidly creating embedded device firmware with Microsoft Visual Studio. This overview discusses the purposes and uses of the .NET Micro Framework.

  • Convergence of .NET and Embedded Development
    .NET managed-code development is becoming more common in the Embedded space, using Microsoft platforms that span various scales.

  • Understanding .NET Micro Framework Architecture
    Optimized for small devices, Microsoft Visual Studio, and C#, the .NET Micro Framework architecture is designed to be flexible and adaptable for programming in embedded systems. The efficient, low resource-consuming design features enable you to create a variety of small devices including medical instrumentation, robotics, and GPS devices.

  • Creating Managed Applications
    Use .NET Micro Framework to create managed applications with a basic infrastructure that developers of constrained embedded systems need for fast, seamless development. The customized CLR and the class libraries are carefully crafted for use on small embedded devices.

  • Developing Global Applications
    World-ready applications increase your chances of reaching emerging markets so crucial to business success. The .NET Micro Framework includes classes in the globalization and text namespaces for developing appropriate character sets for the countries, cultures, and locales you want to target.

  • Designing User Interfaces
    Your development of user interfaces, for your hardware that supports a display device, benefits from the .NET Micro Framework's customized version of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). This WPF version offers highly targeted functionality that contains only what you need to create streamlined applications for the smallest devices.

  • Controlling Timing with the System and Slow Clocks
    Two clocks provide timing control you can build into your applications using the .NET Micro Framework. Here you can find how the speeds are set, the properties for retrieval, and the clock frequencies.

  • Encrypting and Decrypting Data
    Protect your application data with .NET Micro Framework encrypting and decrypting capabilities. You can choose to implement secure keys, digital signing, and built-in cryptographic capabilities to create custom encryption. This overview guides you through use of the the cryptography API.

  • Writing Managed Drivers
    Create managed drivers that enable the .NET Micro Framework application to communicate with various types of hardware devices.

  • Debugging Applications
    Whether your application is deployed to the hardware emulator or to an actual device, you have full debugging capabilities with Microsoft .NET Micro Framework. You can use essentially the same techniques in Visual Studio you would use for any other managed C# application.

  • Implementing Web Services on Your Devices
    You'll be able to use plug and play for your networked devices using Devices Profile for Web Services (DPWS), included with the .NET Micro Framework. Referencing libraries, handling exceptions and threads, and calling the client are among the types of functionality that are provided with this Web Services profile.

  • Implementing SSL Connections
    You can provide confidentiality and integrity checking for messages transmitted between a client and a server using the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) within the .NET Micro Framework.

  • Using File Input/Output and Storage Media
    Manage files, storage media, directories, and paths with .NET Micro Framework classes, created from a subset of .NET classes, chosen and crafted to streamline file I/O and storage media for small devices.

  • Deploying Applications to Hardware
    You can deploy your .NET Micro Framework project to the hardware emulator included in this SDK or directly to your hardware by performing three main tasks.

  • Troubleshooting Deployment Problems
    When deployment of your .NET Micro Framework application to a hardware device isn’t going as smoothly as planned, these troubleshooting scenarios might eliminate problems encountered as you deploy a Microsoft .NET Micro Framework application to a hardware device.