When .NET and Lidar Join Forces - Things Happen

Meet the .NET Battletank 3000, a groundbreaking autonomous tank platform that combines the power of the .NET framework with advanced Lidar technology.

Who needs AI chatbots? Let's learn all about Lidar and have some fun with .NET and AI in something you can build yourself!

Tiny Devices, Big Potential: .NET & C# IoT

.NET: It’s everywhere you want to be from the cloud, to your desktop, to your phone, web, and yes even nestled inside your smart toaster

In this session, we’ll shine a spotlight on .NET and C# in the fascinating world of the Internet of Things, focusing on microcomputers, single-board computers, and microcontrollers.

With .NET, even small microcomputers can flex their .NET muscles. But why stop there? Thanks to .NET nanoFramework, we’ll boldly go where only 64 kilobytes of memory are enough right into the heart of microcontrollers.

Join me for a fun tour of building IoT solutions with C# and .NET in the IoT ecosystem. And since no modern tech talk is complete without a mention of AI, don’t be surprised if a .NET-powered MCP server or two makes an appearance!

Come along as we explore how .NET’s superpowers are transforming even the most resource-constrained edge devices proving once and for all that size doesn’t matter when you have .NET on your side!

Tiny Devices, Big Potential: .NET & C# in the AWS IoT Ecosystem

.NET: It’s everywhere you want to be from the cloud, to your desktop, to your phone, web, and yes even nestled inside your smart toaster. In this session, we’ll shine a spotlight on .NET and C# in the fascinating world of the Internet of Things, focusing on microcomputers, single-board computers, and microcontrollers.

With .NET, even small microcomputers can flex their .NET muscles. But why stop there? Thanks to .NET nanoFramework, we’ll boldly go where only 64 kilobytes of memory are enough right into the heart of microcontrollers.

Join me for a fun tour of building IoT solutions with C# and .NET in the AWS IoT ecosystem. And since no modern tech talk is complete without a mention of AI, don’t be surprised if a .NET-powered MCP server or two makes an appearance!

Come along as we explore how .NET’s superpowers are transforming even the most resource-constrained edge devices proving once and for all that size doesn’t matter when you have .NET on your side!

The Wonderful world of .NET, Microcontrollers and Azure IoT

In this session we will learn about microcontrollers and how to build low cost, low power IoT solutions with your favourite language C# and .NET Nanoframework.

It's also not IoT without the "I" part, so let's connect the microcontroller to Azure IoT and learn all about the power of Azure IoT and Azure IoT Central with code and fun demos.

Securing IoT with Azure Sphere

Something often missing from IoT solutions is security. Azure Sphere is a solution for creating highly-secured, connected Microcontroller (MCU) devices.

Join this session for an introduction to Azure Sphere and learn how to create secure IoT solutions from silicon all the way through to the Cloud using Azure IoT.

Reflecting on MAUI

Pepper's ghost is a Victorian theatre trick: bounce a bright image off angled glass and it appears to float in mid-air. It's what makes a holographic display pyramid work, ghosts appear on stage and it's exactly what happens when you lie your phone face-up on the dashboard and its screen reflects off a sheet of acrylic at 45 degrees.

Most .NET MAUI apps are XAML: pages of controls, bound to data, arranged in stacks and grids. This one starts the same way and then walks away from all of it. The controls go, the layouts go, and what's left is a single drawing surface filled from pure C# — redrawn many times a second, mirrored so the reflection reads correctly, and driven by whatever the phone's sensors and notifications know about where you are and where you're headed.

You'll see it running against real glass, and get a proper look at how it's put together. Hopefully you'll leave with a sense of what you can do with MAUI and have some fun doing it.

LLMs vs. SLMs: Choosing the Right Tool for the Job with Microsoft Phi-3 and .NET on Local Devices

In the world of AI, bigger isn’t always better. As Large Language Models (LLMs) dominate headlines with their impressive capabilities, Small Language Models (SLMs) offer a compelling alternative for many real-world applications. This talk breaks down the key factors that help developers decide when to use LLMs versus SLMs, focusing on performance, efficiency, and scalability. We’ll dive deep into Microsoft Phi-3, a cutting-edge SLM optimized for running on local devices using .NET, and show how it strikes the perfect balance between power and resource-efficiency. Learn how to harness the strengths of each model type depending on task complexity, hardware constraints, and cost considerations. With practical examples and live demos, this session equips you with the insights needed to pick the right model for your project—without sacrificing speed, flexibility, or performance.

Keeping your plants alive with an Arduino and Azure IoT

If you are anything like me you will be forever forgetting to water your plants and when you remember it's too late.

Let's learn how to grow chilli plants with an Arduino with Visual Studio Code and monitor from the cloud using the Azure IoT (SAAS) solution, Azure IoT Central.

Integrating Azure OpenAI into Your .NET Applications

This session offers an engaging and insightful session where the convergence of AI and software development takes center stage.

Attendees will embark on a journey to blend the awesomeness of Azure OpenAI with their .NET projects, infusing them with remarkable AI capabilities.

These capabilities empower applications to not only understand natural language but also generate responses that mirror human-like context and depth.

Holograms, man. Holograms!!

Holograms were once pure sci‑fi. Then, in the early 90s, I saw one in the wild: the Time Traveler arcade at Wonderland in N1 City, Cape Town. Seeing that glowing cowboy I knew I had to make one, one day. No matter how bad the acting was, it was just magic.

Join me for a fun and fast‑paced journey where we bend light, perception, and code to make magic. We’ll explore the art and tech behind pseudo‑holograms, Pepper’s Ghost, and persistence‑of‑vision displays, turning developer skills into visual wizardry. Together we’ll recreate the Time Traveler effect (because we can), and we’ll go further by bringing a digital AI avatar to life as a “hologram.”

You’ll gain practical know‑how, starter resources, and the confidence to create at your kitchen table.

Discover how classic illusions work and why they feel like holograms.
Blend software, simple optics, and electronics to create 3D‑like visuals.
Build the Time Traveler effect and a live AI “hologram” avatar you can make yourself.
We don’t just need chatbots, we need holograms in our lives. Holograms, man. Holograms!

More importantly lets just have fun building cool things with tech!

Harvesting the Future: Smart Farming and Zero Landfill Solutions for your Home and Garden

It's been another year of happily growing tasty things in my Home Smart farm. This is all working wonderfully, but what can we all do to boost the sustainability levels even more?

I decided my personal next goal is "zero landfill". We throw away so much and all that happens is, it goes onto a landfill somewhere and eventually causes environmental damage.

What if we could recycle all the organic waste, convert it into compost and return it back into our own home-grown crops? How can we use technology to assist us and ensure composting and soil is good for our plants?

If you enjoyed learning about how I built a Smart Farm at last year's DevConf, this session is the next part of the journey. We will use what we started there, extend it and take our own sustainability to the next level.

Join me on my next "rabbit hole" journey of learning, science and discovery using technology and developer skills for a more sustainable future.

Create the sustainable home farm of your dreams! REMOVE

Are you interested in growing your own food at home, but unsure of how to get started? Do you want to create a sustainable home farm that is both productive and environmentally friendly? Look no further!

In this exciting presentation, we will be exploring the amazing potential of using your dev skills in C# and .NET, using .NET Nanoframework on microcontrollers (ESP32) and the cloud to create a sustainable home farm. By leveraging the power of these technologies, you can optimize your home farm for maximum productivity, sustainability and power efficiency. But best of all not have it be a full time job to maintain as a home farmer.

Join me on my journey of builidng my own farm at home and I will cover my experiences and everything needed to build a ruggedized, weather-proof, outdoor farming system: powered by the sun and irrigated by rainwater.

This talk will cover what I've personally done and learnt by building my own home farm and how I built a mini farming system to grow my own produce. The talk will cover accessible programming for microcontrollers using c# and .net nanoframework, some .NET MAUI, BLE, practical electronics (and how to have it survive the elements of outdoors) and home automation The talk will also cover the practical aspects of growing seeds, and the actual growing of the plants and custom irrigation systems. Some content created on the topic can be found here: https://explorationspace.co.za/

Canvassing Your Agents

Chat is good at working out what you want. It's a poor place to watch work happen. Once an agent is triaging fifty issues, the transcript stops being a workspace and becomes a wall of text you have to re-read before you can trust any of it.

Canvas extensions in the GitHub Copilot app change that shape. A canvas is a live surface that opens beside the session: the agent updates it while it works, you edit that same surface, and it continues from your change. People act through UI controls, agents through callable actions, both against one shared state.

We'll take one apart: see what's inside, and how it actually runs.

Building Yourself an AI Powered Microscope

Are you fascinated by the prospect of assembling your own intelligent Digital Microscope, writing the control software for it and deploying it from the cloud? If the answer is yes, then this session is for you!

The other title for this talk could have been "How I solved my own accessibility problems with tech and AI". What started as a mobile app project to read the part numbers on integrated circuits has transformed to become a Raspberry Pi Linux based kiosk app, Digital Microscope powered by AI Vision. The reason for this: it's becoming increasingly hard for me to read the text on IC's (without a magnifying glass). The ONLY solution to this accessibility issue is ofcourse with technology and electronics!!!

Imagine building your own Microscope that can read text, identify objects, and gain insights from the visuals. We could call this "Copilot for Microscopes"! Let's use all the Azure AI goodness and Azure CosmosDB to build this solution.

Join me for a fun "Do-it-yourself" session with demos and code!

Building Connected Intelligent Applications with Xamarin

Xamarin enables C# devs to become native iOS, Android, and Windows mobile app dev overnight. Learn how to leverage your existing .NET and C# skills to create iOS, Android mobile apps in Visual Studio.

What we will cover in this session:

How to build Apps with Xamarin
What's New in Xamarin and Xamarin.Forms
Adding AI to your Apps with Microsoft Cognitive Services

Bringing the Edge Into Focus

I built a digital microscope that combined IoT and AI into something useful, practical, and centred on accessibility. It could see, read, and talk, and it ran entirely in the cloud. This year, the journey is moving all of it from the cloud to the edge.

Join me as we take every capability off the cloud and onto the device itself. Vision, text recognition, speech, conversational AI, and even retrieval, all shifting from hosted services to models running locally on a small device, with no connection required. We will explore what each move from cloud to edge costs, where running locally surprises you, and what living on the device makes possible that the cloud never could.

Best of all, this is all still done with .NET and Avalonia.

Going from cloud to edge means this accessibility solution now travels with me, signal or not. Hopefully the session sparks some ideas about what else becomes possible when you move the intelligence onto the device.

Be an Agent of Your Creativity: Build Engaging AI Agents with Azure and .NET!

Are you excited about the idea of creating your own AI agents but don’t know where to start? Do you want to build smart applications that engage users in meaningful conversations? Look no further!

In this session, we’ll dive into the incredible world of the Azure AI Agent Service and Semantic Kernel, all with your favorite and also super powerful .NET framework. By harnessing these technologies, you can craft intelligent agents that not only respond but truly understand user intent and context. Imagine building applications that feel like chatting with a friend rather than a robot!

Get ready to bring your applications to life with a little AI Agent magic!

Arduino Meets Its Sharper Half

The Arduino UNO Q is a strange and wonderful thing: a classic Arduino for precise real-time I/O, bolted to a quad-core Qualcomm processor running full Debian Linux with a GPU. Two brains on one board. I wanted to build a proper HMI on it, in C#.

So this session builds exactly that. A real Avalonia interface running on .NET on the Linux side, driving a display, while the STM32 microcontroller reads sensors and handles buttons and hardware in real time. The two talk over Arduino's message-passing router, and our .NET app connects to it directly and becomes a first-class citizen on the bridge. A reading on a pin becomes a value on screen, and a control on screen moves something real.

The microcontroller speaks its native Arduino, the Linux side is all C#, and the two meet at the bridge. If you have ever wanted to build a real device with a real interface, this shows you how.

AI, .NET and the Digital Microscope

Join me on a Journey of combining IoT and AI to produce a solution that is useful, practical and also improves accessibility.

We will cover how to incorporate a custom Raspberry Pi based imaging device directly with Azure AI services, like Azure Ai Vision (Ocr and Image Analysis) and Azure Ai Speech. We will also use OpenAi and incorporate RAG in a seamless way using Azure CosmosDB.

Best of all this is all done with .NET and Avalonia.

This solution definitely catered for my own accessibility needs, hopefully the session will spark some ideas of what else can be done with AI.

A Pico-Sized Brain

A R100 microcontroller, no operating system, and C# running on the bare metal, talking to the cloud over its own wifi. That is .NET nanoFramework on the Raspberry Pi Pico. Not for raw speed, but because you debug it from Visual Studio like any other .NET app, with real breakpoints, a base class library, and NuGet.

Then the fun part: making a device this small AI-native. The Pico describes its own capabilities, in C#, in a form an AI agent understands. The AI adapts to the hardware rather than the other way around. Mind-blowing what can be done with MCU's.

The same language, from kilobytes of RAM to the cloud, and a genuinely new way to make the smallest hardware you own a first-class citizen in an AI-driven world.

Accelerating your AI solutions with Azure Percept

Azure Percept is a comprehensive, easy-to-use platform with added security for creating edge AI solutions.

Lets have a look at how easily Azure Percept works out of the box with Azure Cognitive Services, Azure Machine Learning, and other Azure services to deliver vision and audio insights in real time on the edge.

Building Connected Intelligent Applications with .NET MAUI

.NET MAUI (Multi-platform App UI) enables C# devs to become native iOS, Android, and Windows app developers overnight.

Azure AI services encompass an extensive range of readily available and adaptable artificial intelligence resources, including tools, APIs, and models. These resources facilitate the acceleration of your business process modernization efforts.

Leverage these intelligent capabilities to build advanced tools and applications powered by extensive language models. These solutions drive automation in document processing, enhance customer service, pinpoint the origins of anomalies, extract valuable insights from content, and much more.

This session is about how to leverage your existing .NET and C# skills to create intelligent AI enabled apps on iOS, Android in Visual Studio.

Building BLE enabled mobile experiences using .NET MAUI and Nanoframework

Are you interested in learning how to build exciting and innovative cross-platform applications? If so, then this session on learning .NET MAUI and using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to connect to an ESP32 using .NET Nanoframework is just for you!

During this session, you will learn how to use the .NET MAUI framework to build native applications for Android, iOS, and Windows devices. You will also learn how to use BLE to connect your application to an ESP32 microcontroller using the .NET Nanoframework. By the end of this session, you will have a solid understanding of the concepts involved in building cross-platform applications using .NET MAUI and how to leverage BLE technology to create a powerful and versatile application.

Whether you are an experienced developer or just starting out, this session is perfect for anyone looking to learn more about .NET MAUI and BLE technology. So, come join us and take your development skills to the next level!

Create the sustainable home farm of your dreams!

Are you interested in growing your own food at home, but unsure of how to get started? Do you want to create a sustainable home farm that is both productive and environmentally friendly? Look no further!

In this exciting presentation, we will be exploring the amazing potential of using your dev skills in C# and .NET, using .NET Nanoframework on microcontrollers (ESP32) and the cloud to create a sustainable home farm. By leveraging the power of these technologies, you can optimize your home farm for maximum productivity, sustainability and power efficiency. But best of all not have it be a full time job to maintain as a home farmer.

Join me on my journey of builidng my own farm at home and I will cover my experiences and everything needed to build a ruggedized, weather-proof, outdoor farming system: powered by the sun and irrigated by rainwater.

Xamarin and Beyond!

Xamarin enables C# devs to become native iOS, Android, and Windows mobile app developers overnight. We all by now know Xamarin is an awesome platform for mobile development. In this session we go beyond mobile and complete the ".NET everywhere story" and look at Xamarin and .NET c# based applications running on Linux desktops, IoT devices, Web applications via Web Assembly, Tvs and more!

We will take cross platform to the extreme and extend code sharing across more than the usual mobile platforms using Xamarin and .NET Standard.

What we will feature in this session:

Linux GTK
Mono and Web Assembly
Android Things
Tizen
And maybe a surprise platform or two

Using Azure and the Internet of Things

Azure IoT Hub is a Microsoft Azure cloud service that offers reliable and secure device-to-cloud and cloud-to-device messaging that scales to millions of devices.

This session is about embracing all “Internet of Things” devices, whatever the technology or IoT platform used. We will together add the “I” in IoT with the power of Azure Iot in a secure bi-directional way and feature solutions using Azure Stream Analytics and also some Azure Machine Learning.

With Azure IoT, makers can get started with minimum effort and scale up your solution as its needs grow, without having to rewrite it or rework what you’ve already built."

What we will cover in this session:

Different IoT device platforms and what they offer
Developer Tooling
Azure IoT Hubs
Azure Stream Analytics
Machine Learning

Let's Talk About Azure and the Internet of Things!

With the hype of AI, the buzz around "Internet of Things" has been left by the wayside. It is however still very much a "Thing" in the world. In the age of AI: Data and Telemetry are more important than ever. In this session we will have a look at all the IoT offerings found in Azure from the "old" but proven, “Azure IoT Hub” to the shiny new “Azure IoT Operations” currently in preview.

We will cover all the available options including:

Azure IoT Hub
Azure IoT Edge
Azure Event Grid
Azure IoT Central
Azure IoT Operations

During the session we will talk about where to use what and when. From Cloud IoT to Edge IoT and the services and solutions provided in Azure for each option.

I hope you will join me in this look at all the options we have in our Azure Toolbox to add the "I" of “IoT” to our electronic, embedded creations and flashy LED solutions!

The session is the standard 45 min session. Requirements is the Internet. An available table and a multiplug /extra plug points is always appreciated for any of my IoT talks.

Building the Intelligent Edge with Azure and IoT Edge

The Intelligent Edge: Make hybrid cloud and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions a reality with Azure IoT Edge, a fully managed service that delivers cloud intelligence locally. Seamlessly deploy and run artificial intelligence, Azure services, and custom logic directly on cross-platform IoT devices—from a small Raspberry Pi to large industrial machines. And manage it all centrally in the cloud with the security of Microsoft.

Use the same programming models you use in the cloud to create and test your IoT applications and then push them to your edge devices. This session is an introduction to Azure Iot Edge and what it can do for you.

Getting started with Azure Sphere

Get ready for the MCU IoT revolution
Azure Sphere is a solution for creating highly-secured, connected Microcontroller (MCU) devices, providing you with the confidence and the power to reimagine your business and create the future.

Join me for an introduction to Azure Sphere and all things Azure IoT. Come see the devices in action!

Let's Talk About Azure IoT

All about devices, Azure IoT Hubs and Azure Sphere

Get ready for the MCU IoT revolution

Azure Sphere is a solution for creating highly-secured, connected Microcontroller (MCU) devices, providing you with the confidence and the power to reimagine your business and create the future.

Featuring

Azure IoT and IoT Edge
Azure Sphere
MXchip Azure Kit

Let's create an Azure Sphere, Real-time Secure IoT Solution

Get ready for the MCU IoT revolution

Azure Sphere is a solution for creating highly-secured, connected Microcontroller (MCU) devices, providing you with the confidence and the power to reimagine your business and create the future.

Let's firstly learn what Azure Sphere is all about and why it's a good thing for society. Then we will have some demo fun and learn more with it in action within a mobile enabled real-time IoT solution.

What will be learnt is how Azure Sphere, Azure IoT Hubs, Xamarin, SignalR and CosmosDB can all come together in a melting pot to create a solution.

Build Cross Platform Mobile Apps with Xamarin

These days .NET can be found running almost anywhere! Let's have a look together at what's new in Xamarin and Xamarin Forms and also how to leverage your existing .NET and C# skills to create beautiful native cross platform mobile apps in Visual Studio 2019.

The hobbyists guide to solving household problems with IoT Central

Recently Cape Town was to become the first major city to run out of water. I did what most Capetonians did at the time, I purchased a rainwater tank. It worked well and helped reduce the need for tap water. I had just moved water to the "Edge" (our house) but all the problems of managing water is now mine! That lead me to wonder, how do I know this water is safe and won't harm us?

This session is about how to use IoT Central and a few hobbyist components to monitor the water conditions in the garden rain water tank, quickly, easily and best of all for free.

This solution was for my own personal family use, what could we use this technology to do for the rest of society?

Learning about building an Azure IoT Edge Solution the fun way

The Intelligent Edge: Make hybrid cloud and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions a reality with Azure IoT Edge, a fully managed service that delivers cloud intelligence locally. Seamlessly deploy and run artificial intelligence, Azure services, and custom logic directly on cross-platform IoT devices—from a small Raspberry Pi to large industrial machines. And manage it all centrally in the cloud with the security of Microsoft.

Let's look at learning how Azure IoT Edge works the fun way. Lets look at how it can be used to create a mini robot platform.

The hobbyists guide to getting started with cloud connected IoT Solutions

Before solving the world's problems with tech, one has to start somewhere. Where better than practicing at home with our own household problems to solve?

In this session we will be looking into getting up and running with a globally scalable IoT platform like Microsoft Azure the quick, fun and easy way.

Featured in the session will also be some interesting devices out there to use, like the common Nodemcu, MXChip AZ3166 kits, Maixduino AI accelerated boards and also why something like Azure Sphere devices are important not only to our own projects but to society as well as a whole.

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Hackathons for Skills Development

This session is all about how we are creating a platform to learn anything via IoT.

We have a skills shortage in South Africa. A way to start addressing that problem, is to bring more interesting, fun and physically tangible training to the community to accelerate learning.

Instead of boring lectures, demo's and exercises in console windows, we are using hackathons to facilitate learning. Starting with IoT and AI we will be creating a learning platform attendees can take home in a physical form, with the aim to build on it each lesson.

The learning topics go far beyond AI and IoT and what will be able to be learnt, the sky is the limit!

Getting Started with App Center Build-Test-Distribute

Visual Studio App Center is an integrated mobile development lifecycle solution for iOS, Android, Windows and macOS apps. It brings together multiple services commonly used by mobile developers.

In this lab, we are going to automate the Build-Test-Distribute process for mobile applications using App Center

See how you can use App Center to:

- Build you mobile app from a repository
- Manage Teams and Distribution groups for apps
- Test the application
- Automate Build-Test-Distribute

Features of App Center

Visual Studio App Center is an integrated mobile development lifecycle solution for iOS, Android, Windows and macOS apps. It brings together multiple services commonly used by mobile developers.

In this lab, we are going to learn how to use the additional features of App Center over and above the CI /CD capabilities.

See how you can use App Center to:

- Build you mobile app from a repository (Xamarin, iOS, Android or React-Native)
- Distribute application to a group of users
- Use Crash Logging
- Create Usage Analytics
- Push Notifications

.NET is Everywhere: Internet of Things and Microcontrollers!

Join this session for a captivating journey into the realm of Internet of Things (IoT) as we explore the revolutionary possibilities of running .NET on microcontrollers.

In this lightning talk, we will delve into the convergence of powerful .NET capabilities with the constrained environments of microcontrollers, showcasing how this synergy is reshaping the landscape of edge computing.

Microsoft Graph goes Mobile

Microsoft Graph is the gateway to data and intelligence in Microsoft 365. It provides a unified programmability model that you can use to access the tremendous amount of data in Office 365.

Let's take a deep dive into Microsoft Graph and how you can use the Microsoft Graph SDK in your mobile apps.

Azure DevOps on the Edge!

In this deep dive into what is needed to create IoT Edge Modules and compose Edge solutions, we will have a look at how to use Azure DevOps to continuously build and deploy IoT Edge applications to real devices at scale.

There will be docker, there will be manifests and there will be bots!

Automating your Home or Office with IoT Central and Power Apps

The world is moving rapidly towards integrating technology into our daily lives. Smart Homes and Smart Buildings are becoming the norm.

IoT Central is an IoT application platform that reduces the burden and cost of developing, managing, and maintaining enterprise-grade IoT solutions.

Power Apps is a suite of apps, services, connectors and data platform that provides a rapid application development environment to build custom apps.

In this session we will be looking at using both to leverage "low-code" to rapidly create scalable solutions to automate the home or office.