.NET Gadgeteer - Microsoft’s open-source toolkit for building gadgets

 .NET Gadgeteer's sample camera built by Nicholas Villar

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DIY gadgets' makers have a new solution for quick and easy building of custom devices in the form of the .NET Gadgeteer platform. Utilizing .NET Micro Framework and C# programming language, .NET Gadgeteer is an open-source toolkit combined of a basic ARM CPU-equipped mainboard and a choice of easily attachable modules, including displays, buttons, camera, Ethernet, USB ports, or WiFi. The idea resembles the Arduino platform or EZ-Builder kit for DIY robotics projects like DJ Sures' WALL-E.

Roots of the project are to be found in Microsoft Research engineer Steve Hodges' prototype of the SenseCam wearable digital camera. It took around two man-years to accomplish the prototype and essentially led Microsoft's team to look for simpler solutions.

Nicolas Villar and James Scott of Microsoft's Sensors and Devices Group, have worked over the past two and half years developing the .NET Gadgeteer toolkit.

The .NET Gadgeteer's central processing unit mainboard is designed to enable easy attaching of chosen modules, without soldering or detailed, specialist knowledge of electronics. The programming is done via C# language, based on Microsoft Visual Studio with IntelliSense feature streamlining the coding process by auto-completing lines of code or utilizing code packages. All required software is available as free downloads.

.NET Gadgeteer is generally aimed at engineers, designers and researchers requiring a quick and easy way to build prototypes of devices, or as an educational tool for teachers, as well as any amateur tinkering enthusiast.

.NET Gadgeteer's team has come with a number of devices showcasing the toolkit's capabilities including an automated home-heating system (to be presented at UbiComp 2011 conference in Beijing in September), a miniature stop-motion animation studio and a miniature arcade cabinet.

GHI Electronics is the first company to offer .NET Gadgeteer toolkit in the form of FEZ Spider Starter Kit which comes with a mainboard and over a dozen of attachable modules and cables. Pre-order pricing is US$249.95 and shipping begins on 30 September.

Steve Hodges and Nicolas Villar describe the .NET Gadgeteer project in the following video:

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Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Tower to claim world’s tallest building title

 The Kingdom Tower will stand over one kilometer tallImage Gallery (9 images)

Chicago-based firm Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill (AS+GG) has officially been announced as the design architects for the Kingdom Tower that is to be built in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Initially planned to stand one mile (1.6 km) high and be called the Mile-High Tower, the building was scaled down after soil testing in the area in 2008 cast doubt over whether the location could support a building of that height. Now the building will stand over 0.62 miles (one kilometer) tall, which will still allow it to overshadow the 2,717 ft. (828 m) Burj Khalifa to claim the title of the world's tallest building.

The Kingdom Tower will be the centerpiece and first construction phase of Kingdom City, a 57 million square foot (5.3 million m2) development located along the Red Sea north of Jeddah, which is known as the traditional gateway to the holy city of Mecca. The entire development has been budgeted at US$20 billion, with the Kingdom Tower alone costing approximately $1.2 billion to construct and covering an area of 5.7 million square feet (530,000 m2).

The building will contain 59 elevators, including 54 single-deck and five double-deck elevators, as well as 12 escalators. The elevators serving the observatory will travel at 22 mph (36 km/h) in both directions. At level 157, a sky terrace roughly 98 feet (30 m) in diameter intended as an outdoor amenity for use by the penthouse floor extends from the side of the building.

The exterior wall system is designed to minimize energy consumption by reducing thermal loads, while a series of notches on the building's three sides create pockets of shadow that shield areas of the building from direct sunlight and provide outdoor terraces.

The three-sided tower rises from a three-petal footprint design with aerodynamic tapering wings that help reduce structural loading due to wind vortex shedding. Gill says the tower's sleek, streamlined form was inspired by the folded fronds of young desert plant growth.

"With its slender, subtly asymmetrical massing, the tower evokes a bundle of leaves shooting up from the ground - a burst of new life that heralds more growth all around it," added Smith.

While the building's exact height isn't yet known, when completed AS+GG claim it will be at least 568 feet (173 m) taller than the Burj Khalifa, which was also designed by Adrian Smith when he was at architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). At SOM, Smith also worked on the design for the Pearl River Tower, while AS+GG also recently won an international competition to design China's Wuhan Greenland Center.

AS+GG says design development of the Kingdom Tower is underway, the foundation drawings are already complete and construction is set to begin 'imminently."

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