Netduino Pulse-Width-Modulation LED Project

Create a Netduino project in Visual Studio 2015 for Windows or the latest Visual Studio for Mac; name the project PwmLed.

Add the Netduino.Foundation NuGet Package

Windows

Right-click on your PwmLed project and click Manage Nuget Packages . In the Browse tab, search for Netduino.Foundation; it should be the first search result. Click the Install button.

Adding Netduino.Foundation nuget package

MacOS

Alt-click on your PwmLed project in the Solution Explorer , and click Add => Add Nuget Package to open the NuGet Package window. Search for the Netduino.Foundation package and click Add Package to add it to your project.

Adding Netduino.Foundation nuget package

Control the LED

You'll use the Pulse Width Modulation library contained in Netduino.Foundation to control the brightness of your LED. Add the Netduino.Foundation namepace: add a using statement  for SecretLabs.NETMF.Hardware.Netduino. The code below uses an Alias named N.

In the Main method, create a new PwmLed object named pwdLed. In the constructor, specify the pin you're using to control the LED (pin 11) and the color of the LED (to select an appropriate voltage).

Using pwmLed, you can now invoke different APIs to light up your LED, such as StartBlink, StartPulse, or SetBrightness. These methods include parameters to control the LED behavior such as duration, high brightness and low brightness.

using System.Threading;
using N = SecretLabs.NETMF.Hardware.Netduino;
using Netduino.Foundation.LEDs;

namespace Blinky
{ 
    public class Program 
    { 
        public static void Main()
        {
            var pwmLed = new PwmLed
            (
                N.PWMChannels.PWM_PIN_D11,
                TypicalForwardVoltage.Green
            );
            
            // pulse the LED
            pwmLed.StartPulse();

            // keep the app running
            Thread.Sleep(Timeout.Infinite);
        }
    }
}

Run the project

Click the run button in Visual Studio to see your LED pulse! It should be similar to the following gif:

White LED in a Pulse animation with PWM

Check out Netduino.Foundation!

This project is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the extensive exciting things you can do with Netduino.Foundation.

• It comes with a Huge Peripheral Driver Library with drivers for the most common sensors and peripherals available in the market.

• All the peripheral drivers are simplified with built-in functionality, exposed by a clean, modern API.

• This project is backed by a growing community that is constantly working on building cool connected things and always excited to help new-comers and discuss new projects.

References

• Netduino.Foundation

• PwmLed Sample from Netduino.Foundation site