TinyCLR OS Eighth Release: FEZ Hydra, Wi-Fi, and Cortex-M7

Today we are excited to release the eighth preview of our TinyCLR OS. This release adds a firmware and bootloader for the FEZ Hydra, a driver for the SPWF04Sx Wi-Fi module from STMicroelectronics, and a build of the core for Cortex-M7 based devices. There are also a number of new smaller APIs that you should find useful.

As before, you can find all downloads in their respective sections on the downloads page. Just download the new installers and NuGet packages to get going. You don’t even need to download the firmwares since you can use the update firmware feature in TinyCLR Config to automatically download them for you.

In case you missed it, take a look at the roadmap detailing our road to 1.0 for TinyCLR OS.

TinyCLR OS Downloads: http://docs.ghielectronics.com/tinyclr/downloads.html
TinyCLR OS Release Notes: http://docs.ghielectronics.com/tinyclr/release_notes.html

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That SPWF04Sx has a STM32F439. Does this mean we could flash TinyClr to to it directly and the driver should work?

The driver in question we added was for their AT command interface, not any internal processor.

That said, as you mentioned, it is an STM32F439, so, in theory, TinyCLR could be ported to it.

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Does the driver support both UART and SPI modes? Also, what kind of speeds do you get with this? I’m assuming that the driver was written in c++.

The driver currently utilizes the SPI interface only and is written in managed code at the moment. We have not done benchmarking yet.

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Thank’s for this new release. I update my BrainPad and Panda 3 with TinyCLR Config. All is right on W10 and W7:sunglasses:

Great job !
I’ve just updated boards: FEZ Spider I, FEZ Spider II, FEZ Cerberus, Brain pad (old and new), Panda III have been easly updated (from v0.7.0) with TinyClr.

For netduino3, update need to be done manually: donwload hex file, use dfu manager to convert to dfu, and use dfuDemoSe to put firmware on netduino3, I don’t know if future version of TinyClr support this board on not.

For FEZ Raptor, when press update Firmware, I get Firmware corrupted . I will try to update manually.

UPDATE
Manually it can be done without problem.

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@John_Brochue: I’ve found why FEZ Raptor won’t update:
in file: http://files.ghielectronics.com/downloads/TinyCLR/Firmwares/FirmwareList.xml
the MD5 for firmware is 53277EBA90E4966F1AB1EB484F987B38 instead of
7CC4E057095FA9BCD7D99523BC90839C

If you’re still accepting suggestions for important functionality, here are a few.

  1. Interrupt driven, DMA UART driver with large buffers (similar in functionality to what’s in .Net Micro).
  2. File system (I know it is on your road map, just sayin’).

Those are the easy ones, here’s the hard one.

  1. Port a rock solid, fully stable version of TinyCLR to several, appropriate evaluation boards from ST Micro, TI, Atmel, Silicon Labs and other significant ARM players and convince those companies to include it with the other software they provide with those evaluation kits (like they already do with Keil, IAR, etc.)… More exposure -> more users -> more market share -> market dominance -> GHI company condos in Hawaii and Vail and free vacations for early supporters!
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I support this motion.

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Thanks for the catch, the MD5 has been corrected.

With regards to the UART buffer size, this release actually allows you to customize the size of the TX and RX buffer on a per port basis to be as large or as small as you want (up to the available heap size of course).

While the methods to do so aren’t exposed on the SerialDevice class, you can use reflection to change them. See SizeReflection.cs · GitHub for an example

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How about the SPWF01 ?

In time, you will be able to use any WiFi module. This is a step one to get that new efforts in line.

Even USB wifi modules?

Those are very cheap because they heavenly depend on the OS. Not fun to deal with.

Oh. Ok so how does one tell the difference between a Software wifi dongle and a “Hardware” one? This reminds me of the day of sofware and hardware modems.

You need ones with built in TCP and SSL

Yea, then I can see that being a problem.

I see a Cortex-M7 core lib, but i don’t see target for cortexm7 chip on github… will be available ?

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