Beam data to/from Palm device

You might try the Palm websites. There are also books on the Palm. I believe the Palm uses IrDA at the hardware level. I believe that the Dragonball CPU had IrDA support built-in.

The comms services that are built into the PalmOS ROM are layered on an IrDA stack. Implementing this on your embedded project is decidedly non-trivial, unless you're using a high-end microcontroller that can run a full-featured OS like Linux (and thereby ride its free IrDA support).

It IS possible to write software on the Palm that programs the IR hardware directly and implements simpler protocols (like CIR). Again, quite a bit of engineering.

I used a Palm device to send a SNAP packet to a device to turn on/off lights in an archetects model of a block of flats.

I used NS BASIC which at the time only let me use the IR port as a serial port, but I believe subsequent releases have IrDa protocols built in. Try their web site.

One problem with IrDa is the very short distance it works over; about 10 inches max, so you can't use it to turn over the TV.

believe

CPU had

"Lewin A.R.W. Edwards" wrote in news:9OednXJGkseqB6 snipped-for-privacy@broadviewnet.net:

or you let the PalmOS do that ;-) at least for IrDA PHYs

i once wrote a program named "SIRTerminal" (google finds it on my old homepage, mail me to get the sources) that uses that feature. PalmOS 3.5 supports using the serial port in IrDA physical layer only, thus its pretty easy. i once made an iterval timer using a MSP430F1121 (4k Flash) where i could communicate with a simple terminal program over IR. that device runs on a button cell using the MSPs low power modes and it still works with the same battery after some years :-)

at one point i should compile SIRTerminal with the new SDK and i think it needs a few small bugfixes for PalmOS 5...

chris

I guess I will drop this idea. I thought this would be a neat way to share photos, music, minutes from meetings, etc between Palm users.

Foolish me, I thought that I could simply interface an IR transceiver and encoder/decoder device like the MicroChip MCP2150 to an AVR microcontroller and the hardware interface would be complete. I expected writing the micro software to IR connect to the PALM would be the challenge. After reviewing several postings, I now believe that this would not be practical especially when data files are quite large.

Thanks to all that responded.

Regards,

Kev>

"Lewin A.R.W. Edwards" wrote

Microchip have some devices that you can put in your embedded project. They implement the IrDA protocol up to the IrCOMM layer. They have an interface to an IrDA transceiver on one side, and a full serial port on the other. After a connection is established you can just talk through them over the serial port.

=============================== Actually, I think using the 2150 is a good idea... and a large serial ram or flash on the avr spi solves the large data problem, right?