The Secret Labs, makers of the famous series of Netduino boards and AGENT smartwatch based on .Net Micro Framework, could not wait for an official release by Microsoft and has decided to make available an experimental SDK for Visual Studio 2013 !

Chris Walker has disclosed the news on the official forum and explained that he had used the open source code of .NET Micro Framework to generate this SDK that will no longer be supported by the Secret Labs when Microsoft will release the official one.

Obviously, I have not been able to wait and after installing Visual Studio 2013 I downloaded the SDK to be able to try a simple application on my Netduino Plus board. In addition to the .NET Micro Framework SDK, it is also needed to download and install the Secret Labs SDK, also experimental for Visual Studio 2013.

SDK .Net Micro Framework 4.3 (RTM) and SDK Netduino boards

The SDK installer is related to the .NET Micro Framework 4.3 (RTM) version and it is perfectly identical to the official as well as throughout the installation process.

01

After you install both SDK, you will find the templates for generic .Net Micro Framework projects in C# and those relating to the Netduino boards family.

02

The most simple "Hello World" application in the embedded world, ie the blink of an LED (in this case the onboard led on the Netduino Plus), works perfectly well as also all the debugging features.

   1: public class Program
   2: {
   3:     public static void Main()
   4:     {
   5:         // write your code here
   6:         OutputPort led = new OutputPort(Pins.ONBOARD_LED, false);
   7:  
   8:         while (true)
   9:         {
  10:             Thread.Sleep(1000);
  11:             led.Write(!led.Read());
  12:         }
  13:     }
  14: }

SDK AGENT Smartwatch

The Secret Labs wanted to do more and also focus on the product of 2014: the AGENT smartwatch. Indeed, it was even released an SDK for the future experimental smartwatch based on .Net Micro Framework, as announced on its forum.

After installation, there are templates for developing applications and watch face.

03

Even in this case, a simple "Hello World" application and the watch face work without any problem on the emulator agent.

04 05