Next to my desk I have a stack of Raspberry PI’s and with the release of .Net Core 5 for Windows, Macintosh and Linux I decided to have another look at porting some of my nRF24L01, LoRa, and LoRaWAN libraries to .Net Core.
There are blog posts (like Deploying and Debugging Raspberry Pi .NET Applications using VS Code) about installing .Net core on a Raspberry PI, using Visual Studio Code to write an application, then deploying and debugging it over SSH which were interesting but there were a lot of steps so the likelihood me screwing up was high.
I have been using Visual Studio for C# and VB.Net code since .Net was first released (I wrote my first C# applications with Visual Studio 6) so when I stumbled across RaspberryDebugger it was time to unbox a Raspberry PI 3B and see what happened.
All coding demos start with Hello world…
using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Threading;
namespace devMobile.NetCore.ConsoleApp
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
while (true)
{
Console.WriteLine($"{DateTime.UtcNow:HH:mm:ss} Hello World!");
Thread.Sleep(1000);
}
}
}
}
The RaspberryDebugger is really simple to install, and “frictionless” to use. The developers have put a lot of effort into making it easy to deploy and debug a .Net Core application running on a Raspberry PI with Visual Studio. All I had to do was search for, then download and install their Visual Studio Extension(VSIX).
Then configure the connection information for the devices I wanted to use.
On my main development system I was using multiple Raspberry PI devices so it was great to be able to pre-configure several devices.
I had connected to each device with PuTTY to check that connectivity was sorted.
After typing in my “Hello world” application I had to select the device I wanted to use
Then I pressed F5 and it worked! It’s very unusual for things to work first time so I was stunned. The application was “automagically” downloaded and run in the debugger on the device.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
You may only use the Microsoft .NET Core Debugger (vsdbg) with
Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio or Visual Studio for Mac software
to help you develop and test your applications.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Loaded '/usr/lib/dotnet/shared/Microsoft.NETCore.App/5.0.4/System.Private.CoreLib.dll'. Skipped loading symbols. Module is optimized and the debugger option 'Just My Code' is enabled.
Loaded '/home/pi/vsdbg/ConsoleApp/ConsoleApp.dll'. Symbols loaded.
Loaded '/usr/lib/dotnet/shared/Microsoft.NETCore.App/5.0.4/System.Runtime.dll'. Skipped loading symbols. Module is optimized and the debugger option 'Just My Code' is enabled.
Loaded '/usr/lib/dotnet/shared/Microsoft.NETCore.App/5.0.4/System.Console.dll'. Skipped loading symbols. Module is optimized and the debugger option 'Just My Code' is enabled.
Loaded '/usr/lib/dotnet/shared/Microsoft.NETCore.App/5.0.4/System.Threading.Thread.dll'. Skipped loading symbols. Module is optimized and the debugger option 'Just My Code' is enabled.
Loaded '/usr/lib/dotnet/shared/Microsoft.NETCore.App/5.0.4/System.Threading.dll'. Skipped loading symbols. Module is optimized and the debugger option 'Just My Code' is enabled.
Loaded '/usr/lib/dotnet/shared/Microsoft.NETCore.App/5.0.4/System.Text.Encoding.Extensions.dll'. Skipped loading symbols. Module is optimized and the debugger option 'Just My Code' is enabled.
Loaded '/usr/lib/dotnet/shared/Microsoft.NETCore.App/5.0.4/Microsoft.Win32.Primitives.dll'. Skipped loading symbols. Module is optimized and the debugger option 'Just My Code' is enabled.
05:50:37 Hello World!
05:50:39 Hello World!
05:50:40 Hello World!
05:50:41 Hello World!
05:50:42 Hello World!
05:50:43 Hello World!
...
Once the basics were sorted I wanted to check out the General Purpose Input & Output(GPIO) support implemented in the dotnet/iot libraries. My test-rig was a RaspberryPI 3B with a Grove Base Hat for Raspberry PI (left over from a Windows 10 IoT Core proof of concept project), a couple of Grove Universal 4 pin 5CM cables, a Grove LED pack, and a Grove Button.
using System;
using System.Device.Gpio;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Threading;
namespace devMobile.NetCore.ConsoleGPIO1
{
class Program
{
const int ButtonPinNumber = 5;
const int LedPinNumber = 16;
static void Main(string[] args)
{
try
{
GpioController controller = new GpioController(PinNumberingScheme.Logical);
controller.OpenPin(ButtonPinNumber, PinMode.InputPullUp);
controller.OpenPin(LedPinNumber, PinMode.Output);
while (true)
{
if (controller.Read(ButtonPinNumber) == PinValue.High)
{
if (controller.Read(LedPinNumber) == PinValue.Low)
{
controller.Write(LedPinNumber, PinValue.High);
}
else
{
controller.Write(LedPinNumber, PinValue.Low);
}
}
Thread.Sleep(100);
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
}
}
}
}
After starting the application, when I pressed the button the Grove LED flashed with a 100mSec duty cycle.
The RaspberryDebugger extension is a joy to use and I’m going to figure out how I can donate some money to the developers.
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