This optional course is offered to the students of the MS degree in Telecommunication, Computer and Communication Networks, Computer Science, Electronics Engineering and Nanotechnologies for ICT, and is held in the second semester of the final year. The goal is to make the students able to write applications able to collect data and transfer them though the Internet to cloud based servers. The hardware platform is a FEZ Spider, running a .NETMicroFramework (NETMF) Operating System (OS), with the possibility for some fast working group to also use a Raspberry, running the Raspbian OS. In both cases high level programming languages are used to write the application, C# for the NETMF and Java for Raspbian. After some 20 hours of traditional lectures, devoted to embedded systems, with focus on software environments and programming languages; to NETMF and C# as well on the companion Java; and to communication techniques for embedded systems, students will be involved in the design and implementation of the application. To do this, groups of three students will be formed.

Students will acquire a basic knowledge on "embedded" systems, on the Microsoft Visual Studio system development toolkit and on the object-oriented language C#. The groups that will also add a Raspberry based implementation of the app, will use Eclipse for the development of the app. Moreover, they will learn how to manage a simple project, design, write and debug its software, and document it, working in a group.

Basic programming techniques. Some knowledge of electronics, databases, and web server is useful, but not mandatory.

Lectures: Embedded systems: common characteristics and operating environments Linux embedded on ARM based systems Microsoft .NET Micro Framework (NETMF) The C# programming language: its main features and a comparison with Java Communication among embedded systems and cloud-based servers (WebServices and MQTT) Laboratory: Visual Studio for embedded systems Design, implementation and debug of simple applications Project: each group of students autonomously designs an application to fulfill the requirements specified by the teachers. In the lab, problems encountered during the implementation of the applications are discussed and solved.

20 hours of lectures - 40 hours of laboratory

The handouts of the lecture’s slides will be available on the course website

Modalità di esame: Prova orale obbligatoria; Elaborato scritto prodotto in gruppo; Progetto di gruppo;

Exam: Compulsory oral exam; Group essay; Group project;

... The evaluation of the activity of each group will be based on: - the quality of the software written for the project - the oral presentation of the project - the results of the demo of the app An evaluation form, to be filled by each group to indicate the achieved milestones, will be distributed to the students. Each milestone is associated with a maximum amount of points. The total number of points each group will get will therefore depend on the milestones and on the quality of the work for each of them.

Gli studenti e le studentesse con disabilità o con Disturbi Specifici di Apprendimento (DSA), oltre alla segnalazione tramite procedura informatizzata, sono invitati a comunicare anche direttamente al/la docente titolare dell'insegnamento, con un preavviso non inferiore ad una settimana dall'avvio della sessione d'esame, gli strumenti compensativi concordati con l'Unità Special Needs, al fine di permettere al/la docente la declinazione più idonea in riferimento alla specifica tipologia di esame.