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Palm Pilot for cheap serial LCD — Parallax Forums

Palm Pilot for cheap serial LCD

hinvhinv Posts: 1,252
edited 2007-02-08 03:37 in Propeller 1
Hi,

I have been thinking of writing a simple palm program to make it useful as a serial Character/Graphic LCD.
But this idea is so simple I would think that someone would have allready done this. I hope so because I am not experienced in palm programming. I know there is terminal emulators for the palm pilot which would let you do character IO, but how about graphics?
Here are the advantages:
    CHEAP! Palm IIIx units are going for less than $20 on ebay. Low power Built in power supply( you could possibly even power a prop from it) Can take input from stylus or screen keyboard 5 buttons for input Built in backlight Did I say CHEAP!!!!! Portable, and somewhat ruggedized Plenty of processing power to compute things like circles squares, bezier curves
For years, I have been a palm pilot user, but I wished for something like the prop attached to play with IO like I did back in high school on the 6502+8255, or on the 68HC11 mcu.
Now I have a prop, and I want things like storage, good screen, portable development environment, etc that could be developed for a palm pilot.
Of course, I could use my Dell Axim, since it allready has TCL ported to it(which I am formilliar with), and a 3.3V Serial port, but they aren't cheap, emulators are not as numerous(my axim can emulate a palm pilot).

Has anybody seen this kind of stuff done allready?

Thanks,
Doug

Comments

  • bassmasterbassmaster Posts: 181
    edited 2007-02-07 14:33
    I think the Ipod screen is easier to access, plus its color. Sparkfun also has a nice graphical display for cheap.
  • BergamotBergamot Posts: 185
    edited 2007-02-07 14:50
    I think he means using the *intact* palm with some custom software running on it.
  • hinvhinv Posts: 1,252
    edited 2007-02-07 15:01
    I have looked at SparkFun and the only thing I saw that comes close is a 128x128 color display with a 9pin interface. It is $19.95 + shipping. It probably uses less power than a whole palm pilot.
    A couple of features that I forgot to list for palm pilot:

    • Can be controlled by 3 wires, Rx, Tx, Gnd
      160x160 resolution and up HandEra has 320x240
      Color on some units
      Some units are rechargable
      2 to 8MB+ of storage that can be used by a few storage commands.
      Did I say CHEAP on ebay! Less than $20 delivered in some cases!!
  • Don DDon D Posts: 27
    edited 2007-02-07 16:52
    Not to mention Serial IR !
  • LarryLarry Posts: 212
    edited 2007-02-07 20:42
    If you are just looking for a terminal program, there's a free downoad of "online" here

    www.freedownloadscenter.com/Palm_Pilot/Communications_and_Internet/Online.html

    I use it for debugging on my robots all the time

    If you are looking for a programming environment,
    Quartus Forth is extremely powerful and you can develop programs right on the PALM it's free to use
    There's a version of Chipmunk Basic, Hotspaw Basic is the commercial version that does floating point.
    and a C environment, though I have never used it.

    And there's a bunch more, but those are the ones I have experience with.

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  • hinvhinv Posts: 1,252
    edited 2007-02-08 03:37
    crgwbr braught up an interesting palm model, the Sony CLIE PEG-SL10 Handheld
    Here are the features:

    • Palm OS software version 4.1
    • DragonBall VZ 33 MHz
    • 8 MB internal memory
    • Backlit monochrome display, 320 x 320 pixels, 16 gray scale
    • What's in the box: Cli
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