Now let’s talk about the road ahead.
b3.6 Released!
We just released beta 3.6, which is a large release focused on stabilization and quality. In it, are a number of bug releases, a swath of new Meadow.Foundation drivers, and a huge set of upgrades and quality fixes to our documentation. b3.6 is a bit of a change of pace for us; up until this point, we've largely focused on feature release velocity, but it was time to go back and clean things up. Check out the beta 3 release notes for full details. You'll need to make sure to flash your board with the latest Meadow.OS binaries to take advantage of a lot of the fixes.
We have a number of additional issues that we're still working on that might be a part of either a b3.7 release, or rolled into our next big release, 4.0.
b4.0
In tandem with the b3.6 stabilization work, we've been working on a new majori feature release branch, b4.0, which includes several things, all of which are intertwined: debugging, Ahead of Time (AoT) compilation, .NET Core 3.x support, and networking. Not all of these will ship at once (there will be additional point releases such as b4.1, b4.2, etc.), but they are connected.
On Device Debugging
We’re about 1/3rd complete on this. There are three pieces here: IDE integration, over the wire transport, and Meadow.OS integration. Basically, the way it works, is that Meadow.OS + Mono will pipe it’s debugging messages via a socket, through a stream/channel in the USB/Serial comms that the Meadow.CLI and IDEs speak to the Meadow board through, and then the IDEs plug into those messages. The hardest part of all this is getting it over the wire, and that’s now complete. Now we have to do the wiring up on either end; IDE extensions and Mono to the socket layer. For now, that work is on hold, however, until we finish up our Mono work to support AOT and ESP32 firmware upload.
AoT Compilation/Mono Rebase
This work is the lynchpin of the entire b4.0 release. We’re working on AoT support for Meadow; this would mean that when you compile an application and run it on the device, instead of the IL (.NET Intermediate Language) code being interpreted (slow), it would be compiled all the way down to low level assembly (fast). This upgrade could see our performance increase somewhere between 100x and 300x. There are several pieces to this. First, the mono runtime codebase that we use in Meadow.OS is almost a year old, and there are a lot of updates to apply (rebasing) to get it up to speed.
There have been a lot of changes to Mono since our last rebase to support the .NET Core stuff (including Core 3.0 support), a complete changeover on how the BCL (Base Class Library) is structured, and other things in the ongoing effort to bring the two runtimes (.NET Core and Mono) into one .NET runtime that serves all platforms. The good news here is that we’ve completed that rebase and are now just resolving the bugs. We’ve also gotten a proof of concept of AoT working with some basic Meadow apps. There are holes yet to plug there (places where there isn’t yet support for various features/instructions), and it’s a little too early to tell how much work is left.
The bonus here is, once this is complete, we’ll also be .NET Core 3.x compatible, and we’ll switch everything over to that (Meadow.Core, Meadow.Foundation, and all the sample projects). .NET Core 3.x support will also unlock VS Code support, yay!
Networking
The networking feature is also dependent on the mono rebase work. Specifically, the network support is provided by a custom NetworkSocketProvider that gets stuffed into the Mono runtime, and has a messaging protocol that speaks to the ESP32 Network/BLE coprocessor, which actually does the network calls. Because of the changeover to the BCL organization, Mark (who’s working on Network) needs to wait until our Mono is fully updated to put the Socket provider into it. In the meantime, he’s actually been building that class from within a Meadow app, so he can test out all the methods to get it all ready to plug into the subsystem.
More good news here; that work is almost complete. And that work represents the majority of the work to get networking up. There was multiple months of work to get a reliable protocol to handle all the comms in between the two chips that’s already completed.
There is one other big component to the network feature: uploading the ESP32 firmware. Basically, the way that this will work, is that we’ll be able to push new firmware to the ESP32 via the Meadow.CLI, which will push it over UART to the ESP32 chip via the main STM32 F7 MCU. Longer term, this will also be automatic in the IDE extensions; when you go to deploy a Meadow App, the extension will check the Meadow.OS version as well as the version of the code on the ESP32 and update for you.
Currently, uploading firmware to the ESP32 requires special Pogobed hardware, which is obviously not an option for you, the developer consumer. So that CLI firmware update work is now being worked on by Peter, who did the other CLI work (including the debugging transport). This is a surprisingly complex task, and is likely two plus weeks of work there, plus another week of testing and stabilization.
The upshot of all this is that we’re basically working in tandem on both the b3.6 and b4.0 release, and we’re on the home stretch of b4.0. And while we don’t have a timeline for either one, at least now you have some visibility into their progress.
Meadows and Hack Kits for Sale
Finally, we put in the order for the next batch of Meadows; we’re making 1,000 for delivery in March, and they’re available for presale on our store. As with the secret sale, we expect them to sell out, so get your orders in early. We’re also doing another batch of Hack Kit Pros, if you missed out on them during the Kickstarter, I highly recommend getting one; most our sample projects are based on components in it, so it’ll really accelerate your ability to build project.
Rad. Thanks for being a part of this with us!
-Bryan Costanich, CEO Wilderness Labs
P.S. have you joined our public slack yet? Also, if you know of anyone who might be interested, please let them know about Meadow and to subscribe to our awesome newsletter!
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