Today we are excited to release the sixth preview of our TinyCLR OS. This release adds support for the G400 and all of our previous NXP based devices: G120, EMX, Embedded Master, and USBizi. There are new LPC17 and LPC24 ports along with ARM7 and CortexM3 builds of the core now available in our ports repo on GitHub. There are also new bootloaders available and we fixed automatic loading of USB drivers for devices.
Also available in this release is a very early preview of the new TinyCLR Config tool. It can be used to update your device from the internet and manage application deployment.
How we distribute releases has also changed. There’s no longer one monolithic archive to download. Instead, everything TinyCLR can be found on its downloads page and bootloaders on their page.
All you need to do to get going is make sure you have Visual Studio 2017, install the latest extension, update your device’s firmware, and drop the new NuGet packages in your local feed. If you’re just now getting started with TinyCLR or just want a quick refresh, take a look at our new docs for more information.
Some of the things that exist today in TinyCLR OS:
Stable preview firmware for G30, G80, G120, G400, EMX, Embedded Master, USBizi, Cerb, FEZCLR, and products based on them
GPIO, UART, SPI, I2C, ADC, DAC, PWM, LCD, and signal generation and capture support
Full debugging capabilities including breakpoints, source stepping, and variable inspection
Support for Visual Studio 2017 and the new Roslyn compiler with an easy install
Practically unlimited max allocation size
Improved deployment and startup times
Better diagnostics support
Code in C# and Visual Basic
Native code interops
Firmware porting
While this preview includes the core features of TinyCLR OS, there is still a lot to do. Here are a few of the things in progress or under consideration:
Now that I’ve got so many working prototype boards and I’m moving on to the real deal… might have to play around with this some on those proto boards… Also got an EMX laying around too somewhere!
Just tried clr config on the netduino 3 net with 0.5.0 on it. Debug shows 0.5.0 correctly, but will not update it to 0.6.0, says no update found. Rebooting the netduino into DFU and restarting clr config does not show the correct comport (COM4) under the loader tab. I am running running win10.
See the release notes for TinyCLR Config, Update Firmware can only be used with devices already on 0.6.0 or higher and only for devices with a GHI bootloader 2+. To update the firmware on the netduino3, you need to enter DFU mode and load a DFU file that you create from the provided hex file.
We’ve also just added the G400 to the 0.6.0 release downloads. You can find the firmware on the TinyCLR downloads page and the new 2.0.4 bootloader on its download page as usual. We also added an ARM9 build of the core to the 0.6.0 release on the ports repo. This firmware should be used with the same 0.6.0 libraries and extension released nearly two weeks ago.
You can see we are working very hard to get it out quickly while keeping it top quality. We will not push the team to meet schedules, instead we will focus on doing it right.
Yes. I want to see FEZ Hydra running TinyCLR. This will be the last needed port for our customers. Then I would love to see it running on Arduino DUE. We want the Arduino users to have a more modern programming option. Plus this will bring TinyCLR to all Atmel devices.
After that we can start talking about moving into the beta stage and about adding more features.
Over all, we are ahead of schedule. We thought we would have all this done by the end of the year, but we still have 3 months. We are very excited.