Skip to main content

.NET Gadgeteer: A Platform for Custom Devices

  • Conference paper

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 7319))

Abstract

.NET Gadgeteer is a new platform conceived to make it easier to design and build custom electronic devices and systems for a range of ubiquitous and mobile computing scenarios. It consists of three main elements: solder-less modular electronic hardware; object-oriented managed software libraries accessed using a high-level programming language and established development environment; and 3D design and construction tools designed to facilitate a great deal of control over the form factor of the resulting electronic devices. Each of these elements is designed to be accessible to a wide range of people with varying backgrounds and levels of experience and at the same time provide enough flexibility to allow experts to build relatively sophisticated devices and complex systems in less time than they are used to. In this paper we describe the .NET Gadgeteer system in detail for the first time, explaining a number of key design decisions and reporting on its use by new users and experts alike.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Arduino, http://arduino.cc/

  2. Arduino Sheilds, http://shieldlist.org/

  3. The ARM MBed, http://mbed.org/

  4. Avrahami, D., Hudson, S.E.: Forming interactivity: a tool for rapid prototyping of physical interactive products. In: Proceedings of the 4th Conference on Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, and Techniques (DIS 2002), pp. 141–146 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Banzi, M.: Getting Started with Arduino. O’Reilly (2008) ISBN: 978-0-596-15551-3

    Google Scholar 

  6. Bdeir, A.: Electronics as material: littleBits. In: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction (TEI 2009), pp. 397–400 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Buechley, L., Eisenberg, M., Catchen, J., Crockett, A.: The LilyPad Arduino: Using Computational Textiles to Investigate Engagement, Aesthetics, and Diversity in Computer Science Education. In: CHI 2008, pp. 423–432 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Bug Labs, http://www.buglabs.net/

  9. Funnel Arduino, http://funnel.cc/

  10. Grove System, http://www.seeedstudio.com/wiki/GROVE_System

  11. Gaver, W., Blythe, M., Boucher, A., Jarvis, N., Bowers, J., Wright, P.: The prayer companion: openness and specificity, materiality and spirituality. In: Proceedings CHI 2010, pp. 2055–2064 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Gaver, W., Boucher, A., Law, A., Pennington, S., Bowers, J., Beaver, J., Humble, J., Kerridge, T., Villar, N., Wilkie, A.: Threshold devices: looking out from the home. In: CHI 2008, pp. 1429–1438 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Gellersen, H., Kortuem, G., Beigl, M., Schmidt, A.: Physical Prototyping With Smart-Its. IEEE Pervasive Computing 3(3), 74–82 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Greenberg, S., Fitchett, C.: Phidgets: easy development of physical interfaces through physical widgets. In: Proceedings of the 14th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2001), pp. 209–218 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Gumstix, http://www.gumstix.com/

  16. Hartmann, B., Klemmer, S.R., Bernstein, M., Abdulla, L., Burr, B., Robinson-Mosher, A., Gee, J.: Reflective physical prototyping through integrated design, test, and analysis. In: Proceedings of UIST 2006 (October 2006)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Hill, J., Szewczyk, R., Woo, A., Hollar, S., Culler, D., Pister, K.: System architecture directions for network sensors. In: ASPLOS 2000 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Hodges, S., Williams, L., Berry, E., Izadi, S., Srinivasan, J., Butler, A., Smyth, G., Kapur, N., Wood, K.: SenseCam: A Retrospective Memory Aid. In: Dourish, P., Friday, A. (eds.) UbiComp 2006. LNCS, vol. 4206, pp. 177–193. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  19. Kalnikaitė, V., Rogers, Y., Bird, J., Villar, N., Bachour, K., Payne, S., Todd, P.M., Schöning, J., Krüger, A., Kreitmayer, S.: How to Nudge In Situ: Designing Lambent Devices to Deliver Salience Information in Supermarkets. In: Proceedings of UbiComp 2011 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Kuzuoka, H., Greenberg, S.: Mediating awareness and communication through digital but physical surrogates. In: CHI 1999 Extended Abstracts, pp. 11–12 (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Lee, J.C., Avrahami, D., Hudson, S.E., Forlizzi, J., Dietz, P.H., Leigh, D.: The Calder toolkit: wired and wireless components for rapidly prototyping interactive devices. In: Proceedings of DIS 2004, pp. 167–175 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  22. LEGO Mindstorms, http://mindstorms.lego.com

  23. Magic Box, http://magic-box.org/

  24. Martin, F., Mikhak, B., Silverman, B.: MetaCricket: a designer’s kit for making computational devices. IBM Syst. J. 39(3-4), 795–815 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. The Microsoft. NET Micro Framework, http://netmf.com/

  26. Myers, B.A., Hudson, S.E., Pausch, R.: Past, Present and Future of User Interface Software Tools. ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interaction 7(1), 3–28 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Petrelli, D., Villar, N., Kalnikaite, V., Dib, L., Whittaker, S.: FM radio: family interplay with sonic mementos. In: Proceedings of CHI 2010 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Rogers, Y., Price, S., Fitzpatrick, G., Fleck, R., Harris, E., Smith, H., Randell, C., Muller, H., O’Malley, C., Stanton, D., Thompson, M., Weal, M.: Ambient wood: designing new forms of digital augmentation for learning outdoors. In: Proceedings of the 2004 Conference on Interaction Design and Children: Building a Community, IDC 2004 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Schnädelbach, H., Koleva, B., Flintham, M., Fraser, M., Izadi, S., Chandler, P., Foster, M., Benford, S., Greenhalgh, C., Rodden, T.: The Augurscope: a mixed reality interface for outdoors. In: Proceedings of CHI 2002, pp. 9–16 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  30. Scott, J., Bernheim Brush, A.J., Krumm, J., Meyers, B., Hazas, M., Hodges, S., Villar, N.: PreHeat: Controlling Home Heating Using Occupancy Prediction. In: Proceedings of UbiComp 2011. ACM (September 2011)

    Google Scholar 

  31. Seeeduino Film, http://www.seeedstudio.com/wiki/index.php?title=Seeeduino_Film

  32. Shapeways, http://shapeways.com

  33. Tinkercad, http://tinkercad.com/

  34. TinkerKit, http://store.arduino.cc/eu/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=16

  35. Tokuhisa, S., et al.: xTel: A Development Environment to Support Rapid Prototyping of Ubiquitous Content. In: TEI 2009, Cambridge, UK (February 2009)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Villar, N., Scott, J., Hodges, S., Hammil, K., Miller, C. (2012). .NET Gadgeteer: A Platform for Custom Devices. In: Kay, J., Lukowicz, P., Tokuda, H., Olivier, P., Krüger, A. (eds) Pervasive Computing. Pervasive 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7319. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31205-2_14

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31205-2_14

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-31204-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-31205-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics