Getting Started with Netduino

Appendix A. Upgrading Firmware

One of the founding principles of Netduino is that Netduino’s hardware and software are open source. Because of this it’s possible to compile the latest Netduino firmware from scratch and reflash your Netduino, to create custom features and incorporate them into the firmware, and to share those custom features with others. Netduino is designed to be fully “hackable.”

The Netduino firmware is made up of two pieces of software: the bootloader (TinyBooter) and the .NET Micro Framework runtime (TinyCLR).

Each variant of Netduino (Netduino, Netduino Plus, and Netduino Mini) has separate versions of the firmware. Make sure you have the right firmware for the board you want to flash. New firmware releases are posted to http://forums.netduino.com under the Hardware section. Go into the subsection (Netduino, Netduino Plus, or Netduino Mini) for the board you want to flash, and look for the posts at the top of the list (they’ll have a title like “Netduino Firmware” followed by a version and update number).

The bootloader runs when the board is first powered on. Its jobs are to load the .NET MF (Micro Framework) runtime and to enable you to update the .NET MF runtime. The .NET MF runtime then runs your Netduino app.

Due to the bonded nature of these two pieces of software, both should be updated whenever a new release of the .NET Micro Framework is released. For minor updates and patches, only the .NET MF runtime needs to be re-flashed. Updates are optional and only ...