With the official release of NuGet and the NuGet gallery, I decided to try it all out by uploading the current versions of WiimoteLib and ThinkGearNET to the gallery.  The process was pretty smooth, but I learned a little bit along the way which I thought I’d share.

So what’s NuGet?
From their own page:  NuGet (formerly known as NuPack) is a free, open source developer focused package management system for the .NET platform intent on simplifying the process of incorporating third party libraries into a .NET application during development.

In short, this means you can right-click and add a reference to a third party library without having to download it yourself, extract it, locate it manually on your drive, deal with dependencies, etc.  All of this is handled automatically, as is finding and integrating new versions of those libraries with your projects.

NuGet as a User
If you want to use NuGet to download packages, you’ll first need to install the …

I released version 1.1 of ThinkGearNET over at CodePlex last week.  ThinkGearNET is a library that allows developers to easily use the Neurosky MindSet device with .NET.  This version now matches Neurosky’s latest SDK and supports eye blink detection.  Nothing else has changed.  If anyone has used a prior version of the library, please give the new version a try and let me know if you have any problems.  Thanks!

I have written and posted a new library that allows .NET developers to easily connect to and use the Neurosky MindSet headset from any .NET application.  You can find the source code and a binary of the library at CodePlex.  Usage is very simple and may seem familiar to those that have used my .NET Wiimote LIbrary; set a reference to the library and you can connect to a headset as follows:

private ThinkGearWrapper _thinkGearWrapper = new ThinkGearWrapper();
 
private void Connect()
{
    _thinkGearWrapper = new ThinkGearWrapper();
    
    // setup the event
    _thinkGearWrapper.ThinkGearChanged += _thinkGearWrapper_ThinkGearChanged;
    
    // connect to the device on the specified COM port at 57600 baud
    _thinkGearWrapper.Connect("COM4", 57600, true);
}
 
void _thinkGearWrapper_ThinkGearChanged(object sender, ThinkGearChangedEventArgs e)
{
    // write out one of the many properties
    Debug.WriteLine("Attention: " + e.ThinkGearState.Attention;
}

The …