Getting Started with Netduino

Appendix B. Developing Netduino Apps with Mono

Although Visual Studio is the fully supported way to develop for Netduino, there is an alternative that allows you to develop Netduino apps on Mac OS X and Linux: Mono, an open source implementation of the .NET Framework CLR. Mono doesn’t include the Micro Framework, but if you’re comfortable with your system’s command line, then you can take the open source bits of the .NET Micro Framework and integrate them with your own installation of Mono.

Note

Because you’ll be loading compiled code from a flash memory card, this works best with a Netduino Plus (because it has an integrated MicroSD card slot). However, you can attach a MicroSD breakout board such as Adafruit’s MicroSD card breakout board+ (http://www.adafruit.com/products/254) to a Netduino or Netduino Mini and use that.

Also, you’ll need to have access to a Windows machine just once, to install a special bootstrapping app on your Netduino that allows you to load programs from the MicroSD card.

Prepare the Netduino

For this step, you’ll need to use a Windows computer and install Visual Studio on it to deploy an app to your Netduino. Chapters 2 and 3 have all the information you need to do this. Once you’re able to run apps on your Netduino, download MonoNetduinoBootloader.zip from http://examples.oreilly.com/0636920018032/. Unzip the file and open the project in Visual Studio. Go into the project properties, set the deployment target to your Netduino, and click Debug→Start Debugging. ...