Selecting and Managing Devices

Selecting a Device

You can select the device to which your Microsoft® .NET Micro Framework application will be deployed by selecting the port to which the device is connected using the controls in the Device panel in the MFDeploy main window.

Begin by choosing the type of port to which your device is connected using the leftmost pull-down list in the Device panel. MFDeploy currently supports serial, USB, and TCP/IP connections.

After you have selected the port type, choose the specific port your device is connected to. If your device is on a serial port, the second pull-down list displays a list of the available serial ports. If you selected a USB or TCP/IP port, MFDeploy displays all the devices connected to those types of ports. If there are no USB devices connected, the list is empty.

Testing the State of the Device

To check to see if the selected device is responding, click the Ping button in the Device panel in the MFDeploy main window. MFDeploy displays the response in the output panel. If the selected device is not responding, MFDeploy displays the following message:

Pinging... Error: No response from device

If the .NET Micro Framework common language runtime (CLR) is functional and running, MFDeploy prints the following output:

Pinging... TinyCLR

In rare cases in which the device is functional but the CLR is not, MFDeploy gives the following response:

Pinging... TinyBooter

This situation usually occurs only if some problem in the device has completely erased or garbled both your application and the CLR.

Erasing the Deployment Sector

It is best to erase the deployment area of the flash memory before you deploy new firmware to your device, ensuring that no artifacts from previous versions remain. To do this, click the Erase button in the MFDeploy Device panel. The procedure erases only the programmer-installed managed application and any associated data.

Connecting to a Device

You can connect to your device and monitor its status by selecting Target from the MFDeploy main menu, and then choosing Connect. Once connected, you can issue all other MFDeploy commands and see output messages from the device in MFDeploy's output window. To disconnect from the device, click Target and then Disconnect.

While connected to a device, you can view the time stamp of all messages from the device by choosing Options from the main menu, followed by Time Stamp.

Viewing Your Device's Configuration

To see the hardware characteristics of your device, click Target from the main menu. Next, choose Device Capabilities. You will see a report of the device's hardware capabilities in the output window. The output resembles the following example.

SoftwareVersion.BuildDate:        Dec  4 2007  
SoftwareVersion.CompilerVersion:  310569
Evaluation.TimeRemaining:         00:00:00
EvaluationVersion:                True 
FloatingPoint:                    True
SourceLevelDebugging:             True
LCD.Width:                        320
LCD.Height:                       240
LCD.BitsPerPixel:                 16
AppDomains:                       True
ExceptionFilters:                 True
IncrementalDeployment:            True
SoftReboot:                       True
Profiling:                        False
ProfilingAllocations:             False
ProfilingCalls:                   False
IsUnknown:                        False
    

Note

If MFDeploy is connected to a device with version 2.0 firmware, it will not be able to retrieve all of the information in the configuration report. Specifically, it will not display SoftwareVersion.BuildDate, SoftwareVersion.CompilerVersion, Evaluation.TimeRemaining, and EvaluationVersion.