Getting Started with .NET Gadgeteer

A Gadgeteer Sketch Pad

In this section, we are going to create a Gadgeteer Sketch Pad, before combining it with the Ethernet project to allow our drawings and messages to be served up over the network.

This project is available as a separate project without the Ethernet part and it doesn’t need the Ethernet module or multicolor LED. In fact, it is just a Mainboard and Display.

Figure 4-7. Sketch Pad Modules

The SketchPad screen (see Figure 4-8) has two areas, a main drawing area on the right and a palette area on the left where you can select the drawing color, or click Clear to clear the drawing area. You can erase by selecting black as the drawing color.

Figure 4-8. Sketch Pad Screen

In the discussion that follows, you should open the SketchPad project in Visual Studio so that you can see all the code.

This is another project where we use the WPFWindow class. As usual, the window has a Canvas to contain our components. In this case, the components are an Image named background, which is used as the drawing area, and a set of Border objects that are used as the buttons in the palette area:

void SetupUI() { Border whiteButton; Border yellowButton; Border redButton; Border greenButton; Border blueButton; Border blackButton; Text clearButton; // initialize window mainWindow = display.WPFWindow; ...