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Getting Started Guide for managed code (C#)

.NET nanoFramework enables the writing of managed code applications for embedded devices. Doesn't matter if you are a seasoned .NET developer or if you've just arrived here and want to give it a try.

This getting started guide will walk you through the setup of your development machine to get you coding a nice "Hello World" in no time!

You can find the video for this guide on our YouTube channel here.

Installing and configuring Visual Studio 2019

The first part is to get Visual Studio 2019 (VS 2017 is also supported) and the .NET nanoFramework extension installed.

  1. Download Visual Studio
    If you already have it installed, you can skip this step. If you don't, please download the free Visual Studio Community edition. Make sure to install the workloads for .NET desktop development and .NET Core cross-platform development.

  2. Install the nanoFramework extension for Visual Studio
    Launch Visual Studio (we'll just refer to it as VS from now on) and install the nanoFramework extension.
    You can do this by selecting the menu Extensions > Manage Extensions which will open the Manage Extensions dialog. Select the Online feed category on the left-hand and enter nanoFramework in the search box.

    Visual Studio - Manage Extensions Dialog

  3. You will be prompted to restart Visual Studio to finish installing the extension

  4. Now open the Device Explorer window, by selecting the menu View > Other Windows > Device Explorer. Device Explorer

Uploading the firmware to the board using nanoFirmwareFlasher

The second part is to load the .NET nanoFramework image in the board flash. The best way is to use the nano Firmware Flasher (nanoff) tool. This is a .NET Core CLI command tool.

NOTE

  1. Install nanoff

    dotnet tool install -g nanoff

  2. Perform the update by providing the target name to nano Firmware Flasher. The official name of the target (either a reference or a community board) has to be used, otherwise it won't work as the tool isn't able to guess what board is connected. (The following includes the description for targets of several platforms for completeness)

    • To update the firmware of an ESP32 target connected to COM31, to the latest available preview version. (In case the board you have has one of these: please press and hold Flash button on your board before running command and until you see 'Erasing flash..." message)

      nanoff --target ESP32_WROOM_32 --serialport COM31 --update --preview

    • To update the firmware of a ST board connected through JTAG (ST-Link) to the latest available preview version.

      nanoff --target ST_NUCLEO144_F746ZG --update --preview

    • To update the firmware of a ST board connected through DFU (like the NETDUINO3) you first need to put the board in DFU mode. This can be accomplished by pressing a certain combination of buttons. It depends on the particular hardware that you are using.

      nanoff --target NETDUINO3_WIFI --update --dfu

  3. After the upload completes, the MCU is reset and the nanoCLR image will run. You can check if the board is properly running .NET nanoFramework by looking into the Device Explorer window in Visual Studio.

Coding a 'Hello World' application

Now you have everything that you need to start coding your first application. Let's go for a good old 'Hello World' in micro-controller mode, which is blinking a LED, shall we?

  1. Go back to Visual Studio and select the File > New > Project menu, to open the Create a new project dialog.

    1. Enter nanoFramework into the Search for templates search prompt.
    2. Choose the Blank Application (nanoFramework) template and press the Next button.
    3. Name your project and choose a location of where the project files will be saved, and press the Create button.
    4. The project will be created and opened.
      Create new project dialog

  2. We'll code a very simple application that enters an infinite loop and turns on and off an LED. We'll skip the details because that's not the aim of this guide. Let's just grab the Blinky code from the .NET nanoFramework samples repository. Make sure that the correct GPIO pin is being used. That's the line below the comment mentioning the STM32F746 NUCLEO board. If you don't know which pin to use, just enter something like "ESP32 led pin number" in your preferred search engine - assuming you are using an ESP32 device. If not, change ESP32 with the name of the device you have

  3. Because GPIO is being used we need to pull that class library and a reference to it in our project. The class libraries are distributed through NuGet. To add this class, right click on References in the Solution Explorer and click Manage NuGet Packages. On the search box type nanoFramework. Make sure you have the preview checkbox ticked. Find the nanoFramework.System.Device.Gpio package and click Install. After the license confirmation box, the package will be downloaded and a reference to it will be added. You'll notice that you no longer have the unknown references hints in VS.

  4. You should also make sure to update the mscorlib package before you move to the next step. To update this class, right click on References in the Solution Explorer and click Manage NuGet Packages. On the top of the window, click on Updates and make sure you check the Include Prerelease checkbox. Then click on Select All and do the update.

  5. Click Build Solution from the Build menu. A success message shows in the Build window.

  6. We are almost there. Go into the Device Explorer window and click on the .NET nanoFramework device showing there. Make sure the connection is OK by hitting the Ping button. On success, a message shows on the output window.

    For some STM32 devices you may need two USB cables. For example, the STM32429I-Discovery has a mini-USB connector that is labeled USB-STLINK that powers the device and provides the USB interface for flashing the firmware and/or running the JTAG debugger for debugging native C++ code (in VSCode or other C++ IDE). The micro-USB connector is labeled USB-USER and provides the COM/Serial interface used by the Visual Studio nanoFramework Extension for debugging your C# application code and for Device Explorer. For that device BOTH cables must be plugged into USB ports on your computer.

  7. Let's deploy the application to the board. In order to do that, right click on the Project name and choose Deploy. You'll see the feedback of the several operations that are running on the background in the Output Window. After a successful deployment you need to reset the target and your Hello World blinky application will start running and, voilá, the LED starts blinking! If you want, instead of "just" deploying the application to the target you can choose to start a debug session. To do that hit F5 (as usual) in Visual Studio and watch it run.

Trouble shooting

See this guide for solutions to some common problems: Getting Started Trouble Shooting Guide

Wrapping up

Congratulations! That's your first .NET nanoFramework C# application executing right there on the target board. How awesome is that?!

And this is it for the getting started guide.

You've went through the steps required to install Visual Studio, the .NET nanoFramework extension and the ST-LINK Utility.

You've also learned how to upload .NET nanoFramework firmware images into a target board. And last, but not the least: how to code a simple 'Hello World' C# application and deploy it to a target board.

Check out other guides and tutorials. You may also want to join our Discord channel, where you'll find a supportive community to discuss your ideas and help you in case you get stuck on something.