From: Andrei Chichak (acpmiedm_at_telusplanet.net)
Date: Tue Mar 09 2004 - 08:33:53 PST
Hi Jim,
At 12:10 AM 3/9/2004 -0500, you wrote:
>>I remember a while ago someone grafted an Analog Devices 2 axis
>>accelerometer to a Palm Pilot and came up with a labyrinth game that uses
>>tilt to move the ball. That would be cool.
>
> It would. Maybe I should propose that for an independent study digital
> design project here..
See:
http://www.harbaum.org/till/palm/adxl202/index.html
>Especially if you could somehow link two (or more) Newton's together
>(4-way pong!). Which might not be easy - the controller would have to go
>in one of the two serial ports, or hook in through the IR port.
Newtons do speak appletalk (localtalk) which is a multidrop medium speed
network. Or with pcmcia ethernet cards it could be done using sockets in a
peer to peer fashion.
This project could be pitched at a few levels, digital design, human
interface, networking, oop, and gaming theory. None would be worthy of a
Masters (at least at my University it wouldn't), but as a mid level
undergrad project, it would be challenging and fun too.
>The Newtons might be able to communicate using the other serial port(s) -
>I don't know if the underlying serial classes support using multiple
>serial ports at once.
Yes they do. For RS-232 you could use the built in port off of the dongle
plus something like a Socket Communications single RS-232 port.
>You could hook them through the PCMCIA, as I am pretty sure that those two
>systems are separate (at least until you get to the issue of timing and
>polling, and maybe not really even then, since the NOS is preemptive
>underneath), but that would mean making a PCMCIA interface cable, and
>writing the drivers for said cable..
Without wires, PCMCIA WiFi cards and a TCP/IP sockets connection.
> An even more interesting (and useful) application would be what they
> did with the Itsy: it was a credit-card size PDA prototype (never made it
> out of the lab, although I don't think that was the point) that used a
> tilt-monitor to control the scroll of text. A DSP algorithm filtered out
> noise in the signal, so you could actually walk down the street with you
> text scrolling along at a constant speed, controlled by the tilt. That
> would be great in a NewtonSlate type project..
See:
http://www.analog.com/library/analogDialogue/archives/33-08/accel/#D (I
worked on item I).
>>An OBD-II dongle and application would be easy using ELMs chips.
>
> What is am ELM chip? One of those chips that can be field
> reconfigured, like an FPGA?
No, it is a processor (probably a PIC, but it is reasonably irrelevant)
that has been programmed for a specific purpose. See
http://www.elmelectronics.com/index.html the device would be the
ELM320/ELM322/ELM323. It is an OBD to RS232 converter. The project then
becomes software.
>Jim Witte
>jswitte_at_bloomington.in.us
>Indiana University CS
Andrei
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