small computer

Requests for consumer gear--especially computers-- don't belong in an electronics design group. There's a whole Big 8 hierarchy called comp.*.

You have described a data processing terminal. In an electronics design group, "data collection" means something else entirely.

The "palmtop" category has merged with smartphones and in the process became obsolete. Used gear is found on ebay.

You just went into the *custom* category. So, you only want *one* of these? If not, THE QUANTITY should be part of your spec list.

That is called a database manager.

FIRST, find *a program* that does what you want. If your program only runs on a single platform, THAT PLATFORM has to be part of your spec list as well.

"Inexpensive" might mean something entirely different to me. Next time you're drawing up a spec sheet, put *numbers* on EVERYTHING.

Check out the Asus EEE- 7" diagonal screen and flash-based.

I think it's appropriate for data logging and loading code into micros etc.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

On a sunny day (Wed, 06 Aug 2008 06:57:51 -0400) it happened Spehro Pefhany wrote in :

If you refer to the 701, the keyboard is _not_ suited for data entry, as when you type on the north side of the keys nothing happens... (drops characters). Now that I know that, I type on the south side....

I would like somebody to make a good keyboard. The old IBM AT with springs were OK.

Too small to read. How many characters do you need? Text only or graphics? 80x25?

What the world does NOT need is yet another keyboard layout. Pick something fairly standard and use it.

You left out bar code reader. Entry errors on such shop floor systems are epidemic.

Battery backup? If this is a shop floor device, running on raw AC power is a VERY bad idea. One glitch and you get anything between a reboot or a data trashout.

That costs money. How reliable? In what environment? Does it need computer reliability enhancements such as parity checked RAM, redundant processing, watchdog timer, battery backup, hot swap, RAID drives, SNMP monitoring, alarms, etc??

Numbers please? What your idea of inexpensive? You can throw this together using a Linux handheld or PDA. You can also built it around a high uptime industrial server and data collector. There are two orders of magnitude difference in cost. Wanna be a bit more specific?

What you're describing is called a "data terminal". The terminal has minimal brains and is designed to supply a user interface to a servers, somewhere. Communications can be via serial (RS-232), ethernet, wireless, or various industrial buses.

You can see one in action at any large restraurant or fast food chain. Search Google for "shop floor data terminal".

However, that requires one modification to your requirements. The terminal and the server need to be in seperate boxes. For example, the data terminal can "sit on a counter top". A cable goes to the server, which can "sit on the floor" or be buried somewhere. The server can be almost any laptop, box PC, SBC, or cheap PC, running some manner of DBM (data base mangler) with your application. For a regular PC as a server, the data is recorded on the server and transfered to falsh drive. For a minimal system, the entire application can run on a USB thumb drive (i.e. no hard disk), such as with a mini-ITX based system.

Dig through:

and see if anything looks useful. There are literally hundreds of industrial data collection systems available. Look through Intermec and Symbol (the leaders) products and see if anything looks familiar. Also, nail down your requirements some more. You can build your own, but methinks it's close enough to a shop floor data collector to use something off the shelf.

I must be getting senile. I should give up on decafe.

It's not exactly a shop floor data collector. I assumed that would be the case since it's apparently not portable. What you're describing is close to a common inventory control handheld found in most supermarkets, warehouses, and parking meter enforcement. The device is programmable, user configurable, portable, and overpriced (sorry). I think the removable USB device might be a problem. Some use CF (compact flash) cards.

Here's a selection of typical devices.

Hi,

You could build your own using the N8VEM SBC as a base. It is a low cost Z80 CP/M home brew computer.

Since it has a serial port and parallel port, it can interface with keypads and LCDs. You'd have to write the interface software though.

Possibly you could just use an old serial terminal. You could store the data in the 512K SRAM especially if you use the NVRAM parts.

Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch