Hacking PDA as terminal for PICaxe ?.

Hi All,

I've seen a few threads on here about hacking PDAs to turn them into terminals.

Has anyone done it with a Palm Tungsten T ?

I have tried searching the web, but all I could find were software hacks.

( The last PDA I had was a Psion Organiser XP, so I know nothing about these Palm thingies. This one came out of the bin at work. 250 quid a few years ago, in the bin now !. )

@Buzby.
I've just embarked on a similar quest;
I've bought a Handspring Visor Prism.

What other hardware/software do you have?

I'm happy to share the (small amount of) information that I've found.

e

Hi eclectic,

That's very kind of you !.

As I said, I know nothing about this device, so I don't know how similar to yours it is.

I did buy a USB charger cable to get the PDA powered up. The USB plug is moulded, but the plug that connects to the Palm is screwed together. Inside the plug all 16 pins are available on solder tags, so there may be a route this way.

Also, if I click the Preferences\Communication menus there are some tantalising options, including 'Serial to GSM phone'.

Seeing as it appears to have serial facilities, do I just need some kind of VTxxx emulation software and the pinouts for the plug ?.

My Prism is ancient, compared to the Tungstens.
Which model is yours?

Here's a quick starter.
http://kb.palm.com/wps/portal/kb/na/deviceselector/page_en.html#NA Handhelds

More later this pm.

16 pins? Hmm. My oldie's only got 8.

http://www.splorp.com/pdf/handspringdevkit.pdf

http://pinouts.ru/PDA/palm_m125_pinout.shtml

e

Thanks !

I'm halfway there !.

I've got to do some B&Q DIY stuff now, but I'll give these a try later.

Just checking:
did you get the 16 pinout that I added?

e

The following PalmOS devices ( and perhaps more ) can apparently have direct serial connections to them ( E&OE, check before you buy, no responsibility accepted by me if not usable etc ) ...

* Treo 600, Treo 300, Treo 270, and Treo 90
* Tungsten C, T, T2, T3, W, Zire 71,
* Garmin iQue 3600
* Palm m500, m505, m515, m125, m130, i705,
* Palm m100 and m105.
* Palm V series
* Palm III series (includes Palm VII, PalmPilot, Handera/TRGPro, Symbol SPT1500)
* Sony Clie TH, T, TJ, TG, NX, NR, SJ, and SL series
* Visor Solo, Deluxe, Prism, Platinum, Neo, Pro, Edge

I've got a couple of m105's which I am trying to develop apps for to use as terminal displays; working but limited results so far.

There are pre-built applications for using Palm as terminal emulators ( PalmOrb is perhaps the most well known ) but you have to have the right OS ( Version 3.0 and above AFAIK ) and pre-built apps may not give what's actually wanted; usually the text is just too tiny. If you want to do something other than that you have to write your own apps and that's where the fun really starts; my first venture into using the Palm SDK and related tools resulted in needing a complete Windows re-installation.

Finding the tools, finding comprehensive ( or any ) instructions for using them, let alone getting them to work is a challenge for what is, these days, 'landfill' technology. You've then got to battle with the devices themselves; the m105 OS doesn't appear to have a fixed-width font and the tools I've got for converting Windows' fonts won't so it means having to design font bitmaps and do 'bit-blatting' to the screen, and you've got to work out how to code that with minimal, if any, help.

First off, I know next to nothing about terminal programs.

Some Terminal programs I've “found” are
1.
http://www.tridone.com/tri/

2.
http://pamupamu.at.infoseek.co.jp/soft/mterm/mterm_E.htm

3.
http://netpage.estaminas.com.br/mmand/ptelnet.htm

4.
http://www.sirpic.com/Products.html
http://www.sirpic.com/SirPic.html

http://www.sirpic.com/BuyIt.html

The last one costs a tenner, but,
if it works then I'd buy it to play with.

Has anyone used it?

e

All manner of mono hand held organisers are now just dumped as e-junk, but for PICAXE work they still have a niche. Rather than sweat the interfacing hard yards, & given their now "free to a good home" cheapness, you might be best to just look for Y2K era serial PDAs that already come with terminal programs.

I put some footwork into this ~5 years back, & found Sharp Wizards & Casio PVs (Pocket Viewers) particularly user friendly. See =>http://www.picaxe.orconhosting.net.nz/pvdemo.jpg.PVs are still sold in USB form apparently. Compared with the now thick on the ground 16x2 LCDs, many suitable older PDAs offer a handy big screen view & extended battery life. That PV I used offered 180 hours battery life from 2 x AAAs !

I'll have access to a Casio PV-S460 connection cable next week so I can do the proper pinout for that device, I'll also do a pinout for the PV-S250 / PV-S450 unit as I have a S250.

The only annoying thing I've found with the PV units is that you can't stop it automatically turning off after 5 minutes, there's no option in it's settings
However when running the PVterminal software if you press down one of the scroll buttons or the scroll bar/switch it won't affect the PVterminal software and won't auto-shut off.

@Stan.

I totally agree.
The Casio serial unit is easy(ish) to connect.
(I bought it after your original article ~2006)

But, the fun is in the chase,
rather than the catch.

And, if (when) I can't get 'em to work,
I'll give them to a good home.

e

hippy said:

There are pre-built applications for using Palm as terminal emulators ( PalmOrb is perhaps the most well known ) but you have to have the right OS ( Version 3.0 and above AFAIK ) and pre-built apps may not give what's actually wanted; usually the text is just too tiny. If you want to do something other than that you have to write your own apps and that's where the fun really starts; my first venture into using the Palm SDK and related tools resulted in needing a complete Windows re-installation.

Click to expand...

IIRC, I looked into writing apps for the PalmOS and the amount of work involved to get started seemed insurmountable for simple hobbyist projects. However, I did at one point discover a BASIC interpreter for PalmOS. The idea is that you buy the BASIC app, install that on the Palm, and then you can write simple custom programs fairly easily, without the overhead of the Palm SDK.

That's one way but it may mean spending money. The best I knew of was AppForge / MobileVB which allowed code for PalmOs to be written using VB6. Of course you need to buy both / be legally licensed for each. AppForge has sadly been taken over and the product abandoned and a legitimate VB6 is hard to get hold of.

CASL is one option if prepared to put up with the 'Not licensed' prompt or prepared to pay for a license.

Note : Rev-Ed do not encourage nor sanction software piracy and posts and discussions along those lines will be removed etc.

I think I had this in mind...

http://smallbasic.sourceforge.net/

-Tom

Hi All,

I've downloaded one of the free terminal emulators and installed it OK.

Does anyone know if the port is 'real' RS232 levels, or chip friendly 5v ?.

If I need to build a TTL-to-RS232 converter its no big deal, but I really just wanted to poke wires into my breadboard and use the Palm as a quick and dirty debug tool. Otherwise I might as well use Hyperterm out of COM2.

~~~

Re developing apps for the Palm, I don't want to !.

However, after reading Hippy's last post I shall keep my VB6 disks tightly under wraps. I've been a VB programmer since VB3 ( I still even have 'VB for DOS' somewhere ! ), but when it went to VB.NET I found it couldn't do the basic stuff I was working with, so I stagnated at VB6.

Thanks for all the help,

Buzby

The m100 and m105 appear to have a MAX3386 included so should be fully RS232C compliant. Not sure about the others, but it says connector compatible with other (earlier) versions.

http://www.pspilot.de/pppm100/pppm100.html

@hippy - Thanks for that link!
I have a palm 100m from ancient times....9 or 10 years ago!

At one time I was going to use the screen for displaying data from a picaxe but I bought a serial LCD and just dropped the idea.

I used Hot Paws at the time and was impressed. Here's a link to some screenshots:
http://www.hotpaw.com/rhn/hotpaw/ybasic0.html

Just downloaded it again. Will have to go find the cable now!

edit: it's only a 30 free version then USD~19...too much. There is a free basic but it has no buttons! it's at http://www.thelawrences.org/palmbasic/

Arvin said:

@hippy - Thanks for that link!
I have a palm 100m from ancient times....9 or 10 years ago!

At one time I was going to use the screen for displaying data from a picaxe but I bought a serial LCD and just dropped the idea.

I used Hot Paws at the time and was impressed. Here's a link to some screenshots:
http://www.hotpaw.com/rhn/hotpaw/ybasic0.html

Just downloaded it again. Will have to go find the cable now!

edit: it's only a 30 free version then USD~19...too much.

Click to expand...

As a long-time Palm programmer, I think the $19 for HotPaw buys a lot of capability. I started with HotPaw but have since moved up to a tokenized Basic with database capabilites and a nice IDE http://www.nsbasic.com ($150US)

John

Wow! For a hobbie the $149 price for nsbasic is way too much so I hope you make a little back from selling aps.

Have you made anything that would allow my palm 100m to receive ir data from my 08Ms? I'd buy that!

Probably won't pay $19 for Hot Paws but probably would for a program that would make my palm act as a serial LCD. Especially if it would be using ir or cable! Maybe with simple codes like phanderson's serial LCD uses.

Arvin -given your "oldie but goodie" zeal, perhaps consider a once extremely popular (but now obsolete) Y2K era Nokia TDMA 3310/3320 cell phone, and PICAXE SPI driving it's esteemed 84x84 pixel graphical screen? Check => http://www.electronics-lab.com/projects/mcu/013/index.html . => http://www.larwe.com/technical/2260lcd.html , => http://www.siliconchip.com.au/cms/A_107010/article.html & => http://www.myplace.nu/mp3/nokialcd.htm etc.

Arvin said:

Wow! For a hobbie the $149 price for nsbasic is way too much so I hope you make a little back from selling aps.

Have you made anything that would allow my palm 100m to receive ir data from my 08Ms? I'd buy that!

Click to expand...

I wrote most of the software for a Palm that was used to configure and interrogate a traffic control device that used serial IR for communications. I probably still have some of the code that does serial over IR - I'll have to check.

The software ran on Palm IIIxe and some later devices (OS3.3-OS 4.x) but not most of the OS 5 devices because of changes in the underlying hardware (the later hardware only supported IRDA, not simple IR which allows serial over IR). The maximum baud is limited by the hardware in the specific Palm being used: some were capable of 57,600 - although others were limited to 9600. I've never tried using a PICAXE to send serial data to a Palm via IR. Perhaps a project for a rainy evening???

John

Hi All,

Well, there certainly is a lively interest in these old gadgets.

However, I'm not going to use it as a PICAXE screen after all.

My 12 year old son saw it, said 'Wow, it's retro - cool !', and is now searching the web for games.

Thanks anyway,

Buzby

@Buzby.
Just in case your lad gets fed-up with the pda.

I downloaded
http://www.sirpic.com/BuyIt.html

I butchered a handspring serial connection cradle.

Then, I connected to the output pin of a 3V Picaxe 08M
via a 10k resistor.
(The Visor series use TTL logic)

e

Thinking beyond using PDA's as simple terminals or displays ... depending upon the hardware, it may be possible to use PDA's as serial-to-and-from-something bridges; serial-to-IrDA, serial-to-Bluetooth, serial-to-WiFi, serial-to-GSM. It of course depends on the device hardware and software capabilities, whether two connections can be opened at once. The more capable a PDA the more it's likely to cost ( even second hand ), and older PDA's will be more limited in capability.

Using two PDA's it is in theory possible to use them for wireless downloading of programs to a PICAXE. Theory may not be practice though. I'm not sure the m105's I have can be a bridge between serial and IrDA and bugs in PalmOS, or the way the development software handles serial ports, is getting in the way of it handling the download protocol.

Haven't we already got wireless dowloading to PICAXE ?.

The Virtual Comm Port puts your download cable on a different computer to the one you are sat in front of.

Use WiFi between the two PCs - that's wireless downloading !

True, but bolting a laptop, PC + WiFi, onto a small robot for example can often be a bit of a struggle.