At CodeClub some of the students are building a netduino based power consumption monitor using an Energy Monitor Shield (with my modifications). The approach for the software was “inspired” by the Arduino code developed by the Open Energy Monitor project. First step was to confirm that the Netduino 2 Plus we were using could sample the Alternating Current(AC) waveform often enough.

The first version of the code called the Microsoft.Spot.Hardware.AnalogInput.Read method (which returns a floating point number) 100,000 times. The duration was measured using a Stopwatch class written by ChrisW of Secretlabs.

double value;
AnalogInput x1 = new AnalogInput(Cpu.AnalogChannel.ANALOG_0);

Stopwatch stopwatch = Stopwatch.StartNew();
stopwatch.Start();
for (int i = 0; i < SampleCount; i++)
{
value = x1.Read();
}
stopwatch.Stop();

Duration = 5496 mSec 18195/sec
Duration = 5497 mSec 18191/sec
Duration = 5496 mSec 18195/sec
Duration = 5496 mSec 18195/sec
Duration = 5497 mSec 18191/sec
Duration = 5496 mSec 18195/sec
Duration = 5496 mSec 18195/sec
Duration = 5496 mSec 18195/sec
Duration = 5496 mSec 18195/sec
Duration = 5497 mSec 18191/sec

The AnalogPort also has a overloaded Read method which returns an integer

int value;
AnalogInput x1 = new AnalogInput(Cpu.AnalogChannel.ANALOG_0);
stopwatch.Start();
for (int i = 0; i < SampleCount; i++)
{
value = x1.ReadRaw();
}
stopwatch.Stop();

Duration = 2081 mSec 48053/sec
Duration = 2082 mSec 48030/sec
Duration = 2081 mSec 48053/sec
Duration = 2081 mSec 48053/sec
Duration = 2082 mSec 48030/sec
Duration = 2081 mSec 48053/sec
Duration = 2081 mSec 48053/sec
Duration = 2081 mSec 48053/sec
Duration = 2081 mSec 48053/sec
Duration = 2081 mSec 48053/sec

There is also a Secret labs AnalogInput which has a Read method which returns an integer

int value;
SecretLabs.NETMF.Hardware.AnalogInput x1 = new SecretLabs.NETMF.Hardware.AnalogInput(Pins.GPIO_PIN_A0);
stopwatch.Start();
for (int i = 0; i < SampleCount; i++)
{
value = x1.Read();
}
stopwatch.Stop();

Duration = 8563 mSec 11678/sec
Duration = 8563 mSec 11678/sec
Duration = 8564 mSec 11676/sec
Duration = 8563 mSec 11678/sec
Duration = 8563 mSec 11678/sec
Duration = 8563 mSec 11678/sec
Duration = 8563 mSec 11678/sec
Duration = 8563 mSec 11678/sec
Duration = 8563 mSec 11678/sec
Duration = 8563 mSec 11678/sec

The int Microsoft.Spot.Hardware.AnalogInput.ReadRaw() appears to be  quite a bit faster than the other two approaches.