The power of Raspberry Pi in the computing factor of an Arduino, and the manageability of a mobile app.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Join us on May 22 for our first (online) Wilderness Labs Developer Camp!
about 4 years ago
– Mon, May 11, 2020 at 10:21:40 PM
Hey folks! It's been a while since we did an update here since we've been doing updates via newsletter. If you haven't signed up for it yet, please do!
We want to reach out here though, to make a special announcement; we're hosting our very own developer conference, Wilderness Labs Dev Camp, on Friday May 22, right after Microsoft's //BUILD conference!
Register now and join us for a day of live stream fun, hacking and building IoT with Meadow. In these fun-filled sessions, we're going to demystify embedded hardware and show you that building IoT can be as easy as web or mobile development using full .NET on real embeddable hardware!
We'll cover the Meadow roadmap, getting started with hardware using Meadow, wireless communications, and we'll dive into lots of cool physical projects like how to design a project enclosure, churn a custom PCB, and more. We'll also have expert 1x1s if you need to chat with someone about a particular challenge in IoT or in general.
Tickets are free but you must register for the event to join us on May 22. You won't want to miss out on a day of virtual fun!
Can't wait to see you there!
The end is just the beginning. ❤️
over 4 years ago
– Wed, Dec 04, 2019 at 01:22:37 AM
We did it - Meadow Kickstarter is shipped!
First of all, thank you. Thank you for being part of this journey and making Meadow a reality. Your support of the Kickstarter was integral to making it all happen. We started Wilderness Labs over three years ago, with an idea to turn hardware on its head, and give the opportunity for regular software developers to make their way in it, and as we approach Meadow v1.0, it’s nice to reflect that without you, it wouldn’t have happened; so thank you.
There are just a handful of loose ends to tie up, but otherwise, all of the rewards are out the door. Our shipping systems aren’t integrated, so if you login to backerkit and it doesn’t say that your reward has shipped, don’t worry; it’s probably on its way to you. Please be patient as our global mail systems are getting overloaded with holiday traffic. :)
This is likely the last major update here as we switch back to sending out newsletters. If you’re not subscribed yet, please make sure to here; that’s where we’ll be sending platform updates out from now on. Also, if you haven’t joined our Slack yet, please do!
This is far from the end however, we hope that for each and every one of you, getting a Meadow into your hands is just the first steps on a long and fruitful relationship.
As we wrap up the Kickstarter, I also want to take a moment to do a status update deep dive and provide some visibility into the roadmap to Meadow v1.0.
A couple weeks ago, we shipped Meadow beta 3.5. b3.5 was a big features release, including Serial (UART) support, and a host of upgrades to Meadow.Foundation. Check out the beta 3 release notes for more information.
We’re now working on two beta releases in tandem, beta 3.6, and beta 4.0.
b3.6
Beta 3.6 is a stabilization release. Most of the core GPIO API is now shipped, but we’re taking a moment to iron out the wrinkles, so that the team can switch focus next to the major new features coming out in b4.0 when they arrive. We’ve labeled many of them in the Meadow_Issues repo with Beta3.6, if you want to follow along.
b4.0
Beta 4.0 is a big feature release, and includes several things, all of which are intertwined: debugging, Ahead of Time (AoT) compilation, and networking support.
On Device Debugging
We’re about 1/3rd complete on this. There are three pieces here, IDE integration, over the wire transport, and Meadow.OS integration. Basically, the way it works, is that Meadow.OS + Mono will pipe it’s debugging messages via a socket, through a stream/channel in the USB/Serial comms that the Meadow.CLI and IDEs speak to the Meadow board through, and then the IDEs plug into those messages. The hardest part of all this is getting it over the wire, and that’s now complete. Now we have to do the wiring up on either end; IDE extensions and Mono to the socket layer. For now, that work is on hold, however, until we finish up our Mono work to support AOT and ESP32 firmware upload.
AoT Compilation/Mono Rebase
This work is the lynchpin of the entire b4.0 release. We’re working on AoT support for Meadow; this would mean that when you compile an application and run it on the device, instead of the IL (.NET Intermediate Language) code being interpreted (slow), it would be compiled all the way down to low level assembly (fast). This upgrade could see our performance increase somewhere between 100x and 300x. There are several pieces to this. First, the mono runtime codebase that we use in Meadow.OS is almost a year old, and there are a lot of updates to apply (rebasing) to get it up to speed.
There have been a lot of changes to Mono since our last rebase to support the .NET Core stuff (including Core 3.0 support), a complete changeover on how the BCL (Base Class Library) is structured, and other things in the ongoing effort to bring the two runtimes (.NET Core and Mono) into one .NET runtime that serves all platforms. The good news here is that we’ve completed that rebase and are now just resolving the bugs. We’ve also gotten a proof of concept of AoT working with some basic Meadow apps. There are holes yet to plug there (places where there isn’t yet support for various features/instructions), and it’s a little too early to tell how much work is left.
The bonus here is, once this is complete, we’ll also be .NET Core 3.0 compatible, and we’ll switch everything over to that (Meadow.Core, Meadow.Foundation, and all the sample projects). .NET Core 3.0 support will also unlock VS Code support, yay!
Networking
The networking feature is also dependent on the mono rebase work. Specifically, the network support is provided by a custom NetworkSocketProvider that gets stuffed into the Mono runtime, and has a messaging protocol that speaks to the ESP32 Network/BLE coprocessor, which actually does the network calls. Because of the changeover to the BCL organization, Mark (who’s working on Network) needs to wait until our Mono is fully updated to put the Socket provider into it. In the meantime, he’s actually been building that class from within a Meadow app, so he can test out all the methods to get it all ready to plug into the subsystem.
More good news here; that work is almost complete. And that work represents the majority of the work to get networking up. There was multiple months of work to get a reliable protocol to handle all the comms in between the two chips that’s already completed.
There is one other big component to the network feature; uploading the ESP32 firmware. Basically, the way that this will work, is that we’ll be able to push new firmware to the ESP32 via the Meadow.CLI, which will push it over UART to the ESP32 chip via the main STM32 F7 MCU. Longer term, this will also be automatic in the IDE extensions; when you go to deploy a Meadow App, the extension will check the Meadow.OS version as well as the version of the code on the ESP32 and update for you.
Currently, uploading firmware to the ESP32 requires special Pogobed hardware, which is obviously not an option for you, the developer consumer. So that CLI firmware update work is now being worked on by Peter, who did the other CLI work (including the debugging transport). This is a surprisingly complex task, and is likely two plus weeks of work there, plus another week of testing and stabilization.
The upshot of all this is that we’re basically working in tandem on both the b3.6 and b4.0 release, and we’re on the home stretch of b4.0. And while we don’t have a timeline for either one, at least now you have some visibility into their progress.
Meadows and Hack Kits for Sale
I’ll leave you with one last note; we put in the order for the next batch of Meadows, we’re making 1,000 for delivery in March, and they’re available for presale on our store. As with the secret sale, we expect them to sell out, so get your orders in early. We’re also doing another batch of Hack Kit Pros, if you missed out on them during the Kickstarter, I highly recommend getting one; most our sample projects are based on components in it, so it’ll really accelerate your ability to build project.
Ok, friends, catch you on the newsletter and Slack from now on!
Shipping is almost done!
over 4 years ago
– Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 01:46:51 AM
Hey folks! Real quick update, we've shipped ~80% of the rewards and we're hoping to finish them all up in the next few days! YAAAAAAAS!
Halfway through shipping!
over 4 years ago
– Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 03:57:10 PM
Hey folks, just a real quick note today to let you know that we’ve shipped almost half of the rewards! We expect to finish everything up in the next three-ish weeks! Also, if you were an early backer and haven’t gotten your reward yet, don’t worry, we probably just haven’t shipped that segment yet, for instance; we haven’t shipped any Hack Kit Lites.
Also, we have a public slack org up, so come say 'hi!'
We're a shipping factory!
over 4 years ago
– Tue, Oct 08, 2019 at 03:46:28 PM
These are pictures from the lab yesterday:
Meadows everywhere!
We’ve got boxes stacked everywhere, and we shipped out over 150 orders!
Today we hope to get out another 100 or so. Then we have to take a break and wait for M3 nuts to arrive; we had a slight hiccup in our supply-chain. We decided to upgrade the Meadow Dev Kits and added a mounting kit and both male and female header options for you awesome backers, which requires more nuts and breakaway headers, but that decision never made it to a spreadsheet. :)
The parts are on order, and they should arrive in a couple weeks, so we’ll be able to get the shipping machine rolling again.
