I have posted the slide deck and sample code from my "Interfacing External Hardware Using Managed Code" session that I gave earlier this evening.  I hope everyone that attended enjoyed the presentation and got something useful out of it.  Other than the RFID hardware failing for the 2nd time on me, I thought it went well.  If you have any questions or comments, fire them over to me.

For all 0 of you planning on attending my session at the Tech Valley User Group tonight, please note that it has been rescheduled to next Tuesday, February 19 at 6:30pm due to the impending storm...

Once again, a bit thank you to all of you who took the time to respond.  I was amazed to receive 100 responses as quickly as I did.  So here are the results and a few comments.

1. What type of release schedule would you prefer?

2. I broke backward compatibility between version 1.1 and 1.2. I'm looking to do it again by cleaning up various things such as:

• Moving anything with an X/Y coordinate to a Point struct
• Since there are now 4 IR points all with the same properties (X, Y, MidX, etc.), I'd like to turn an IR itself into a struct, thereby having 4 IR structs in the IRState struct instead of the mish-mash of properties
• And anything else I haven't thought of or mentioned here...

How important is backward compatibility to you?

UPDATE: This event has been rescheduled to Tuesday, February 19 at 6:30pm due to the weather.

For those of you in the Capital District region of NY like myself, I'll be giving a session on how to interface external hardware using .NET at the Tech Valley .NET User Group on Tuesday, February 12 at 6:30pm.  Here's my poorly written blurb on the subject:

While developers write code to build software every day, not often are they exposed to code that drives and interfaces hardware. This session will attempt to bridge that gap and show how .NET can be used to effectively interface several hardware devices, including an RFID reader and tags, Phidget control boards with a variety of sensors, and a servo controller. Finally, the Nintendo Wiimote will be introduced along with my .NET Wiimote Library, demonstrating how to connect to a USB or Bluetooth HID device and use it from .NET, with examples showing what the Wiimote itself is capable of.

If you're in the area, please stop by and …

Update:  Wow!  In just over a week I reached Survey Monkey's limit of 100 responses for the survey.  I'll be posting results soon.  Thanks to everyone who took the time to give me their feedback!

For those of you that use my Managed Wiimote Library (and if you're not, why aren't you?), I've put together a very short, 3 question survey to gather some opinions on how to move forward with upcoming releases.  Please take the 30 seconds to click responses to the 3 multiple choice questions and let me know how you'd like to see the library evolve.  Thanks!