Marco Minerva

I'm Marco Minerva, a Developer from Italy. I have been working with .NET from 2001. I'm a Microsoft Certified Professional Developer for Enterprise Applications and I'm the Community Leader of DotNetToscana, http://www.dottoscana.org, the official .NET User Group in Tuscany, Italy. I organize events, I'm a speaker and write articles for Italian magazine.

Homepage: http://marcominerva.wordpress.com

Playing with Mountaineer Ethernet Mainboard

Posted in Embedded Microcontrollers, REST Web Services on October 1, 2012

Posted by Marco Minerva In these days I’m making some tests with Ethernet Mainboard, a Gadgeteer compatibile mainboard that is produced by the Mountaineer Group. Here it is the main characteristics of the mainboard, as described at http://www.mountaineer-boards.com/home/ethernet-mainboard: “Red mainboard” powered via USB 168 MHz STM32F407 microcontroller with 192 KB RAM and 1 MB on-chip Flash 8 […]

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Gadgeteer Home Automation System

Posted in Embedded Microcontrollers on September 17, 2012

Posted by Marco Minerva In this post I want to describe how to create a Home Automation System that puts together many of the modules and source code we talked about on this blog during the past months. In particular,  we’ll create a Gadgeteer device that uses touch screen capabilities of Display T35 to provide access […]

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Using voice commands to control a servo

Posted in Embedded Microcontrollers on August 3, 2012

Posted by Marco Minerva I’m very interested in combining .NET Gadgeteer devices with other techonologies. In this post I’ll show how to use the Microsft Speech Platform to recognize speech and send commands to control a servo. Let’s start with the Gadgeteer device. We’ll use the HiTec HS-311 servo, the same that has been described […]

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Creating an UDP Server with .NET Gadgeteer

Posted in Embedded Microcontrollers on July 23, 2012

Posted by Marco Minerva Some time ago, we presented a simple TCP Server for .NET Gadgeteer, that has been used in many other projects. Today, we’ll see how to create another kind of server, based on UDP protocol. Its behavior is similar to the one of our TCP Server, but it is simpler because with UDP we don’t have to take […]

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Wi-Fi Gadgeteer Robot controlled by Windows Phone with image streaming

Posted in Embedded Microcontrollers on July 10, 2012

Posted by Marco Minerva I have updagred the .NET Gadgeteer Robot I described in the post Constructing a Bluetooth controlled Robot, replacing the Bluetooth Module with Wi-Fi and adding a camera to stream images. The result is a Robot that can be controlled by a Windows Phone application, with which it is also possible to show […]

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Controlling a Light Switch using Windows Phone

Posted in Embedded Microcontrollers, REST Web Services on July 5, 2012

Posted by Marco Minerva In this post, I’ll show how to control a Relay module using a Windows Phone app that is able to remotely turn on or off a light. (See also: Voice controlled home automation using Arduino) Let’s start creating a new Gadgeteer application. Connect the following modules to a FEZ Spider Mainboard: USB ClientDP; WiFi […]

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Connessioni XBee con device .NET Gadgeteer (Italiano)

Posted in Articoli in Italiano, Embedded Microcontrollers, REST Web Services on July 5, 2012

By Mike Dodaro, translated by Marco Minerva from the original English version Le schede XBee hanno un costo estramamente contenuto e possono essere integrate in qualsiasi tipo di device. Il loro raggio di funzionamento supera quello delle connessioni Bluetooth. L’articolo Zigbee Networking with XBee Series 2 and Seeed’s Products fornisce una rapida introduzione alle funzionalità di XBee. Il libro di Robert Faludi intitolato Building Wireless […]

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.NET Gadgeteer event in Pisa, Italy

Posted in Embedded Microcontrollers on July 1, 2012

Yesterday, in Pisa, Italy, an event organized by the Tuscany .NET Community took place. We have continued the work on the robot we talked about during our first .NET Gadgeteer meeting, on May 12th. Our goals were the following: to update Rover in order to control it via Wi-Fi (the original version was based on […]

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Utilizzare Mayhem con .NET Gadgeteer (Italiano)

Posted in Articoli in Italiano, Embedded Microcontrollers on June 29, 2012

By Mike Dodaro, translated by Marco Minerva from the original English version Mayhem è un’applicazione open source che supporta trigger, eventi e azioni. Il cuore del sistema Mayhem è in esecuzione su un PC, ma gli eventi e le azioni che utilizza possono essere usati praticamente con ogni piattaforma e device. Gli sviluppatori di Mayhem dicono che anche chi non è […]

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Constructing a Bluetooth controlled Robot

Posted in Embedded Microcontrollers on May 19, 2012

Posted by Marco Minerva In this post, I’ll show how to construct a robot with .NET Gadgeteer and how to control it using a Bluetooth connection from a PC application based on the 32feet.NET library. Let’s start from .NET Gadgeteer part. The base of our robot is the Rover 5 Tank Chassis, that provides two […]

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Controlling a Gadgeteer device using Bluetooth Module and 32feet.NET library

Posted in Embedded Microcontrollers on April 21, 2012

Posted by Marco Minerva In this post, I’ll show how to send messages to a GHI Bluetooth module from a PC application using the 32feet .NET library. First of all, let’s create the Gadgeteer application. Connect an USB ClientDP and an OLED Display to a FEZ Spider Mainboard, as in the following screenshot. .NET Gadgeteer […]

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.NET Gadgeteer Motor Driver con due motori e un potenziometro (Italiano)

Posted in Articoli in Italiano, Embedded Microcontrollers on April 4, 2012

By Mike Dodaro, translated by Marco Minerva from the original English version In un post precedente ho descritto come usare un potenziometro con il modulo GHI Electronics Motor Driver L298 module. Questo esempio collega due motori al driver, i quali fanno muovere delle semplici parti meccaniche, come mostrato nel video seguente. Ci sono due bottoni che avviano e fermano i […]

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Controllare un motore con .NET Gadgeteer e un potenziometro (Italiano)

Posted in Articoli in Italiano, Embedded Microcontrollers on April 4, 2012

By Mike Dodaro, translated by Marco Minerva from the original English version Il modulo GHI Electronics Motor Driver L298 fornisce un metodo per impostare la velocità di due motori che possono funzionare contemporaneamente: MoveMotor(Gadgeteer.Modules.GHIElectronics.MotorControllerL298.Motor _motorSide, int _newSpeed). C’è anche un metodo per aumentare la velocità in un certo intervallo di tempo: MoveMotorRampNB(Gadgeteer.Modules.GHIElectronics.MotorControllerL298.Motor _motorSide, int _newSpeed, int _rampingDelayMilli). Questi […]

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Saving settings to XML Configuration Files

Posted in Embedded Microcontrollers on March 25, 2012

Posted by Marco Minerva Some times ago I published a class that allows to read XML Configurtion Files (.config) in the standard .NET format. Now, I am asked how to change and save these settings back to file. So, I have updated the ConfigurationManager class to support these new features. There are two new methods: […]

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Controlling Text-To-Speech from a client application

Posted in Embedded Microcontrollers on March 11, 2012

Posted by Marco Minerva Some times ago I talked about my library that allows to add Text-To-Speech capabilities to a .NET Gadgeteer application. In that occasion, we saw an example in which the text to speak was directly included into the application. But we can do something more interesting. Using the network features of .NET […]

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Controllare il Text-To-Speech da un’applicazione client (Italiano)

Posted in Articoli in Italiano on March 11, 2012

Inviato da Marco Minerva Qualche tempo fa ho presentato la mia libreria che permette di aggiungere funzionalità di Text-To-Speech in un’applicazione .NET Gadgeteer. In tale occasione, abbiamo visto un esempio in cui il testo da riprodurre era incluso direttamente nell’applicazione. Ma possiamo fare qualcosa di più interessante. Sfruttando il supporto al networking incluso nella piattaforma […]

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New version of Text-To-Speech library

Posted in Embedded Microcontrollers on February 26, 2012

Posted by Marco Minerva Some weeks ago I talked about my library for Text-To-Speech with .NET Micro Framework. In the mean time, The Microsoft Translator Service, that I use in my library, has been moved to Azure and has been enhanced with new features. Now it is able to return streams in both WAV and […]

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Text-To-Speech for .NET Micro Framework

Posted in Embedded Microcontrollers on January 21, 2012

Posted by Marco Minerva I’m very interested in the possibility of making my applications speak. So, I have realized a library for .NET Micro Framework that uses Microsoft Translator to obtain streams of wave-file speaking text in the desired language. At this moment, there are 44 supported languages, including English, Italian, German, French, Spanish, Japanese […]

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Text-To-Speech per .NET Micro Framework (Italiano)

Posted in Articoli in Italiano, Embedded Microcontrollers on January 21, 2012

Inviato da Marco Minerva Sono sempre stato appassionato dalla possibilità di far parlare le mie applicazioni.  Ho così realizzato una libreria per .NET Micro Framework che sfrutta Microsoft Translator per ottenere uno stream contenente il parlato del testo che è stato inviato al servizio tramite una chiamata REST. Attualmente, sono supportate ben 44 lingue, tra […]

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Modulo Seeed Cellular Radio per .NET Gadgeteer (Italiano)

Posted in Articoli in Italiano, Embedded Microcontrollers on January 13, 2012

By Mike Dodaro, translated by Marco Minerva from the original English version Il driver per il modulo Cellular Radio di Seeed Studio è ancora in fase di sviluppo, quindi il codice che lavora con esso non è deve essere considerato definitivo. Detto questo, per usare questo modulo per effettuare chiamate vocali è necessario solo conoscere la sintassi […]

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