Hi Jon
I can only speak from my experiences but you can certainly integrate the Netduino prototype board into your bespoke designs. It’s a completely open design. That’s exactly what we have done. One slight issue may be that they seem to be hard to come by at the moment. I asked a question a few weeks back about whether they are obsolete or not. Take a look at the reply.
https://community.wildernesslabs.co/t/n3-hardware-obsolete/1198/5
I don’t know what environment your students will be using but if it’s Visual Studio 2019 then take a look at
https://community.wildernesslabs.co/t/vs2019-netduino-support/1193/5
Also you need to be realistic about real time performance. Simplistically I know, but as the code is interpreted you are usually in the milliseconds and not microseconds of granularity. For lots of applications this is just fine.
There are several possibilities out there but only you can gauge if it meets your requirements. For me personally I like the ability to use C#, reusing a lot of code from the desktop on the Netduino platform. As we have a stable design I’m not looking to change it for a while. I am watching what Meadow is doing and for me this would be top of the list to try when it’s more mature and if the need arises. I’ll get one and have a play at some point.
Good luck
