I've used the Palm m100 running hotpaw basic to talk to an OOPic data logger. Talk about simple and very capable, and very, very cheap.
DLC
: Going off-topic (OT), anyone got an inexpensive solution to this : related problem? Is there something like a Palm OS terminal emulator : that can be programmed with a macro to send out a character every, : say, 10 minutes, then log what comes back to a text file? I don't want : to tie up a full-size computer with this, but it needs enough smarts : to send and receive short strings, know roughly what time it is, etc. : A time stamp would be great, but not absolutely necessary. A used Palm : organizer seems like a great platform for this sort of thing (maybe : rigged with larger batteries to run for long periods). This could be : used for a bunch of applications, but what I have in mind at the : moment is this: : Quantum Research Group makes a nifty capacitive linear position : sensor chip
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available for a : few bucks from DigiKey. You can configure it to chat on a one wire : serial line: You ping it with a short pulse train (a single character : should do, if you choose the right character), and it responds with a : 16-bit position measurement (two 8-bit bytes with the usual start and : stop characters). Whatever terminal emulator I use would have to be : able to deal with
*any* value from 0-255, which might be tricky, since : there be dragons such as ESC, RET, etc. that will cause weirdness in : the logged text file, but most of that could be handled later. I've : programmed in a handful of languages and systems, but haven't done any : Palm OS programming, and would like to avoid reinventing the wheel if : possible. There is a LOT of Palm shareware out there, but I haven't : located what I described above. Ideas? Pointers? Thanks. : -Ted