.NET nanoFramework blog

How we went from 21 firmware packages to 11, and why you'll love it

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 08:11:41 GMT

If you've ever stared at the list of ESP32 firmware packages in nanoFramework and thought "wait, which one do I actually need?" - you're not alone. And today, we're here to fix that.

Build Configuration Updated To Kconfig Options

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 14:37:06 GMT

Keeping a great build system for .NET nanoFramework firmware is something that has been high on our list since the very beginning of the project. One of the reasons for that is simple: the easier…

What It Took to Implement VS Code Debugging for .NET nanoFramework

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 08:46:54 GMT

A journey through wire protocols, symbol files, and bridging two worlds

Hello, here: generics are here for nanoFramework

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 17:49:51 GMT

A long‑awaited milestone is finally real: generics are supported in .NET nanoFramework, and the public preview starts today! 🥳

Celebrating IoT Day with .NET nanoFramework – Empowering IoT Solutions with Ease

Wed, 09 Apr 2025 11:37:30 GMT

In honor of IoT Day, we want to congratulate the community and shine a spotlight on how .NET nanoFramework is enabling developers and decision-makers to build powerful IoT solutions with ease.

Real Hardware Tests in Azure DevOps Pipelines for .NET nanoFramework PR: IoT TestStream

Thu, 26 Dec 2024 07:55:02 GMT

This article will go through what we've put in place for .NET nanoFramework to add real hardware tests in various devices from our Azure DevOps pipelines. It's a kind of dream coming true after…

.NET nanoFramework: TLS 1.3 Available – Security First!

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 09:50:58 GMT

At .NET nanoFramework, security is always a top priority. We're constantly working to ensure your embedded applications are not only powerful but also secure against the latest threats. That's why…

Major enhancements in System.IO.FileSystem for .NET nanoFramework

Thu, 25 Jul 2024 10:38:01 GMT

We are thrilled to announce a series of significant improvements to the System.IO.FileSystem in .NET nanoFramework, designed to enhance your development experience and broaden the scope of your…

nanoFramework GitHub PR analysis

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 17:19:56 GMT

The .NET nanoFramework GitHub organization has 97 public repositories. While I am a huge fan of mono-repositories, I joined the project when there were already too many repositories to move to a…

Welcome Silabs Giant Gecko!

Mon, 06 Feb 2023 16:02:42 GMT

We are expanding (again) the list of hardware platforms on which .NET nanoFramework can run. We are also excited to announce a new supported RTOS.

Decoding ESP32 back trace

Fri, 04 Nov 2022 12:13:41 GMT

Any developer working with ESP32 has most likely came across with one of those infamous “Guru Meditation Error” messages when the execution crashes.

PalThree board becomes Azure Certified Device

Wed, 25 May 2022 12:13:05 GMT

Today we're very proud to announce that the very 1st device running .NET nanoFramework has achieve the status of Azure Certified Device and is also certified for IoT Plug and Play! That’s the…

2 million nuget downloads and counting

Mon, 16 May 2022 08:30:22 GMT

.NET nanoFramework NuGet downloads have reached on the last 7^th of May the symbolic milestone of 2 million downloads. Statistics the 12^th of May shows clearly more than the 2…

Build updated to CMake Presets

Tue, 26 Apr 2022 14:50:24 GMT

Keeping a great build system for .NET nanoFramework firmware is something that is at the top of our concerns since the project foundation. One of the reasons for this is that it decreases the…

Updates in release strategy

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 17:16:14 GMT

As part of our continued effort to provide quality libraries and reduce, as much as possible, any friction on consuming those libraries, we are announcing a major change in our release strategy:…

Over the Air .NET nanoFramework code update using Azure IoT

Mon, 28 Feb 2022 11:03:28 GMT

Over the Air (OTA) is the equivalent of a Windows Update or package update in Windows or Linux but in the Micro Controller Unit (MCU) world. While OTA word can be used in other circumstances, it…

Network Helper to the rescue!

Thu, 06 Jan 2022 14:13:43 GMT

Network connectivity has been given a high priority since the early days of nanoFramework. Despite of that, there is one aspect that we’ve acknowledged as needing improvements: managing network…

VS Code Extension for .NET nanoFramework

Thu, 25 Nov 2021 09:45:58 GMT

We’re just adding a brand new extension to VS Code to enjoy .NET nanoFramework on multiple platforms. When I write multiple platforms, read Windows, Linux and MacOS.

.NET nanoFramework ❤️(automated) documentation

Sat, 23 Oct 2021 08:12:22 GMT

Developers ❤️ when documentations are available, detailed and easy to browse. In .NET nanoFramework we ❤️ developers. So we ❤️ when the documentation is the best! And we make all what we can to…

Five years and counting!

Sat, 16 Oct 2021 09:58:56 GMT

Today we celebrate the 5^th anniversary of .NET nanoFramework. This is more like an ongoing celebration because the initial work on the project started in August 2016 and our stable…

Improved support for ESP32

Tue, 12 Oct 2021 18:26:26 GMT

Today I’m proud to announce something that was due for quite some time: ESP32 firmware for .NET nanoFramework is now building from ESP-IDF 4.3.1. Yes, that’s the latest and greatest from Espressif!

Laurent Ellerbach: a year deeply in .NET nanoFramework

Mon, 13 Sep 2021 09:21:56 GMT

I’ve been using .NET Microframework since it appear and being sad when it’s been stopped. Since I’ve been watching nanoFramework. nanoFramework was not yet .NET nanoFramework when the initial fork…

.NET IoT "bindings" available

Wed, 26 May 2021 09:38:16 GMT

As we have announced, work is underway to align .NET nanoFramework and .NET Core IoT APIs. A bonus coming out of this effort was to be able to use the huge number of “bindings” that exist in the…

Network improvements

Mon, 22 Mar 2021 18:16:32 GMT

Network connections are a key feature for use case scenarios that require… connectivity. Nothing too surprising so far, right?

Unit Test Framework? Yes, we have that too.

Thu, 25 Feb 2021 17:54:16 GMT

Today, I am extremely excite to announce that we have just released the initial version of our Unit Test framework! Yes, Unit Test, like in… Unit Tests! Because it is powered by Visual Studio Test…

Automatic firmware updates

Wed, 02 Dec 2020 11:34:32 GMT

Today we are proud to announce that our Visual Studio extension now supports automatic firmware updates! We hope you agree that this is a major, and much needed feature.

In-field update [WIP]

Mon, 19 Oct 2020 15:59:30 GMT

New features and bug fixes are bread and butter in the software industry and embedded systems are no exception. These are made available in releases, which all need to be published and deployed.…

.NET nanoFramework has joined the .NET Foundation!

Mon, 28 Sep 2020 10:11:03 GMT

We have some great news to share: .NET nanoFramework has reached an important milestone by joining the .NET Foundation!

Changing licensing to MIT

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 10:20:56 GMT

As some of you may have noticed: we have changed the licensing terms of some of our repositories.

Improvements on build system

Thu, 02 Jul 2020 09:08:20 GMT

The build system for all (preview) target images have just been updated to reduce complexity and aid interoperability. These changes are particularly relevant for those interested in local builds…

Stable releases are out!

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 14:32:10 GMT

Today we have completed the publishing of our latest stable releases. This includes all of the firmware images and class libraries.

Multithreading in .NET nanoFramework

Tue, 02 Jun 2020 14:54:46 GMT

Custom attributes with constructor

Fri, 13 Mar 2020 15:30:10 GMT

nanoFramework just got support for these. You can now have custom attributes with a constructor and access the value on the constructor.

C# on the Radiona ULX3S using nanoFramework

Fri, 21 Feb 2020 12:31:13 GMT

nanoFramework has been recently discovered by the technology enthusiast GoJimmyPi who has been actively using it on one of it's projects. He recently wrote a blog post describing it's experience…

Welcome TI CC1352R

Tue, 03 Dec 2019 02:22:52 GMT

Today we have a great announcement to make: we are adding support for Texas Instruments SimpleLink™ multiprotocol and multi-band wireless MCUs.

Stable releases published

Tue, 15 Oct 2019 14:22:17 GMT

Today is a great day: we’ve just published stable releases for all nanoFramework class libraries and firmware images.

Posting native events in nanoFramework

Mon, 26 Aug 2019 08:48:14 GMT

New preview feeds for nanoFramework!

Wed, 21 Aug 2019 16:44:21 GMT

Until now nanoFramework has been using MyGet as its NuGet feed provider to host preview and test packages.

Oil tank telemetry with nanoFramework

Mon, 15 Jul 2019 10:12:35 GMT

The first commercial products with the “nanoFramework inside” label (a shameless copy of the old Intel® logo) are out in the wild! Literally. They were built to perform in a demanding industry and…

nanoFirmawareFlasher is here!

Thu, 04 Jul 2019 18:10:37 GMT

The nanoFramework toolbox just got a new addition: nanoFramework Firmware Flasher.

NuGet, assembly and native versions

Tue, 25 Jun 2019 10:06:07 GMT

nanoFramework C# class libraries are distributed as NuGet packages to be consumed by projects. This has been like this since day one. NuGet packages are practical, easy to distribute, easy to…

nanoFramework Open Collective is here!

Fri, 21 Jun 2019 08:09:26 GMT

Today we have an important announcement to make: nanoFramework is now accepting donations!

High Level Programming Languages for Embedded Projects

Fri, 14 Jun 2019 13:27:11 GMT

Industry expert Mark Harris just published an article on its Altium blog about "High Level Programming Languages for Embedded Projects". The article includes a thorough analysis on the topic on…

SonarCloud is on nanoFramework repos!

Wed, 12 Jun 2019 17:38:39 GMT

Code quality is something that is high in our priority list at nanoFramework.

Deployment image generator

Fri, 31 May 2019 11:21:49 GMT

nanoFramework Visual Studio extension (both VS2017 and VS2019 versions) just got a new improvement: the ability to generate a “deployment image”. And what the heck is a “deployment image” you ask?…

nanoFramework ready hardware?

Mon, 27 May 2019 12:39:27 GMT

A quick blog post about a survey we are conducting about nanoFramework ready hardware.

Welcome TI and CC3220!

Mon, 06 May 2019 09:43:04 GMT

The MCU family is growing larger by the day and it is time to celebrate a new vendor!

To deploy, or not to deploy, that's the question...

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 16:20:26 GMT

nanoFramework class libraries are composed of a managed part (written in C#) and the respective counterpart (written in C/C++) that is part of the firmware image that runs on the target.

Support for Visual Studio 2019: check!

Tue, 02 Apr 2019 06:00:32 GMT

Last week we’ve published nanoFramework extension for Visual Studio 2019. Right on time before the official launch event on April 2, 2019. ;)

Welcome Json.NetMF

Sat, 16 Mar 2019 17:17:32 GMT

If you come from the .NETMF age and at some point worked with json, you’re probably familiar with Matt Weimer's library: Json.NetMF.

All systems green! (again)

Wed, 07 Nov 2018 19:35:25 GMT

After the release of v1.0 we turned a page and that is true on what concerns our GitHub repositories history. Release means tagging a point in the repository commit history. And suddenly after…

nanoFramework v1.0 is official!

Fri, 12 Oct 2018 15:11:30 GMT

Today we are proudly announcing the first official release of nanoFramework.

Obfuscation? We have an app for that!

Wed, 26 Sep 2018 18:31:59 GMT

If you are in the .NET world for long enough, you’ve probably have come across with the term obfuscation at some point.

Network capabilities in nanoFramework: check!!

Fri, 14 Sep 2018 16:02:56 GMT

As they say: better late than never! This post is a belated announcement of networking capabilities being added to nanoFramework. Some of you may already have noticed that during last week…

We are moving our chat to Discord

Wed, 22 Aug 2018 16:36:36 GMT

After many discussions we’ve decided it is within the best interest of the project to move our chat platform from Slack to Discord.

Interop in .NET nanoFramework

Tue, 19 Jun 2018 17:15:39 GMT

Setup Visual Studio to access preview versions feed

Wed, 16 May 2018 15:10:15 GMT

If you are one of those developers that like to have access to the shiny and newer versions of the components you use, this post is for you.

Debugging a visual studio extension

Fri, 02 Feb 2018 15:49:30 GMT

Although it has got easier over the years, debugging Visual Studio extensions is generally thought of as a dark art, this blog post is aimed at those people who wish get started. Specifically it…

One small 'step' for a debugger, one giant leap for the embedded world!!

Tue, 12 Dec 2017 18:36:25 GMT

Today the nanoFramework project hit a major milestone: we’ve released a new version of our Visual Studio extension. What's so special about that I hear you ask... Well it is the first one with the…

Build, build, build…

Sat, 01 Apr 2017 10:32:53 GMT

Here’s a quick overview on one of the key aspects of any software project: the build. nanoFramework is no different and we all know how critical this is, so we’ve put a lot of attention and care…

I'm Framework, nanoFramework

Mon, 23 Jan 2017 18:04:40 GMT

Our vision for it is to be a platform that enables the writing of managed code applications for constrained embedded devices. Developers can harness a familiar IDE such as Visual Studio and their…