RedFly-Shield Socket class and FTP Server

After coming back from a short vacation, I thought I'd add an update to describe my progress with the Watterott Electronic RedFly-Shield.

In the previous blog post I describe the success I've had with setting up the C# Shield class to initialise and setup the RedPine Signals WiFi module (RS9110-N-11-22). Once I was happy with this class I moved on to looking at how to support the 8 sockets on this WiFi module.

Skewworks had added a FTP server class to the code repository over at TinyCLR.com Looking through this, and other network code, it seemed obvious to create a custom Socket class for the RedFly-Shield. I started with the System.Net.Sockets class as a template and began fleshing out the necessary class functions.

After implementing the bare essential Socket functions, I was surprised how quickly it was to get the FTP server class working. A nice feature of creating a new RedFly Socket class is that the only change needed to Skewwork's FTP class was the addition of the following code;

using Socket = RedFly.RedFlySocket;

So right now the RedFlySocket classes can be used to create listening Sockets (only tested TCP ones), accept incoming connections on those sockets, and receive data from a connected host. This initial setup however is able to allow a host PC to connect to the FTP server running on a FEZ Domino, complete a handful of FTP commands (pwd, cwd, etc.), and receive a file located on the FEZ Domino SD card.

A much harder task is to flesh out the RedFlySocket.Send functions. I've come across something odd with my fairly synchronous UART data reception. So now I need to work out a different strategy for handling incoming UART data from the RedPine WiFi module.

Over on my GoogleCode SVN repository, revision 99 of the RedFly class library ties in with this blog post;
http://code.google.com/p/burt/source/browse/trunk/FEZ+Domino+Projects/RedFly/

A RedFly-Tester solution exists that creates a listening Socket on port 23, and simply acknowledges a host trying to telnet to the RedFly Shield;
http://code.google.com/p/burt/source/browse/trunk/FEZ+Domino+Projects/RedFly-Tester/

Revision 96 of the RedFly FTP server solution also ties in with this blog post;
http://code.google.com/p/burt/source/browse/trunk/FEZ+Domino+Projects/FTP+Server+Test/