Smart Device Framework highlights?

Question

I am thinking about introducing OpenNETCF's Smart Device Framework at my company, as I like the SafeHandle class. But I would like to know what else is good in it. Anyone found a good blogpost or something with the most useful classes and functions in OpenNETCF?

Answer 1

We get this question from time to time, and it's actually hard to answer because there's just so much in there.

So here's a list of my favorites, by namespace:

• OpenNETCF.IO
  • FFT (self-explanatory)
  • MemoryMappedFile (IPC data tool)
  • StreamInterfaceDriver (base class for almost any driver-level access)
  • PhysicalAddressPointer (great for direct register access on hardware)
• OpenNETCF.IO.Threading
  • NamedMutex and EventWaitHandle (you can actually use named system events, so they're system unique - again good for IPC)
• OpenNETCF.ToolHelp (good for anything where you need a list of processes, threads, etc)
• OpenNETCF.Diagnostics
  • TextWriterTraceListener and Trace2 (you can do logging just like on the desktop)
• OpenNETCF.Drawing.Imaging (all sorts of stuff for the Imaging namespace - good for alpha blending, rotations, etc)
• OpenNETCF.Net.NetworkInformation (everything you ever wanted to know abpout any of your network interfaces)
• OpenNETCF.Windows.Forms
  • OwnerDrawnList (for those times when a boring list just won't do)
  • RoundGauge (ugly looking, but a great code example on a complex control without flickering)
• OpenNETCF.WindowsCE
  • LargeIntervalTime (for firing events even when the device is suspended)
• OpenNETCF.WindowsCE.Messaging
  • P2PMessageQueue (nothing better for queued IPC)

Now there is a lot more than this in there - there's no way I could reasonably list it all. This is just a sampling of my favorites/most commonly used from quickly browsing the source tree.