I wrote a Palm program and a HotSync conduit which allow Palm to interface with an RioCar unit via a serial cable.
Here's the link

Comments and suggestions are welcome.

WOW.

I'm preparing some new FAQ entries for the upcoming riocar.org site, and this link is going to be used in one of them. Good work.

___________
Tony Fabris

Minor nit;

on the web page it says

Add the following to your config.ini:
[ouput]
notify=1

Shoudln't the second line be
[output]
?

/Michael

You are right!
I made the correction.

Thanks.

Cool!

Question? Do I have to put only the dll in the Palm directory? Or is there a regsvr32 needed? I use the directory c:\program files\Handspring with the HS 3.1.2!

Thanks

CrazyMelki

HotSync conduits aren't registered using regsvr32, at least not to my knowledge.
You can put the dll in any folder as long as you input the full path when adding the conduit using CondCfg.exe.
You might wanna check out my website again, I added few things about how to register the conduit.

Good Luck.

But the CondCfg.exe is a developer app. Can you put this application also on your web to download.

I haven't on my PC and I did quick check the PalmOS website and found this info:

http://oasis.palm.com/dev/kb/manuals/1685.cfm#header

You can use the CondCfg.exe utility to install your conduit on your machine while it is in development, but this is a developer's tool and should not be shipped to end users to install your conduit on their machines. :-(

Thanks

CrazyMelki

Finally I got it work! And found also the Creator ID!

If someone hasn't the Condcfg.exe see the attachment!

Karimg, what you think about to connect via IR instead of serial?

bye

CrazyMelki

I guess it's possible! The advantage of using a serial cable, is the fact that the RioCar unit can be installed anywhere in the car. With IR, you need to have a close distance between devices.

So you think I have to build in a second Palm in my car? See the pic!

Or mabye a Visor?

Are you using a Palm Modem Cable?

What are your further plans for the PalmEmpeg?

bye

CrazyMelki

Why would you have to buy a second Palm unit?
You can use the same Palm device you're using for other things. As to the cable, it's a standard HotSync serial cable. You can get it from any store that sells PDAs.

Future plans include downloading the playlist directly from RioCar without HotSyncing! BTW, that was my original plan, hence the refresh button, but it was not reliable. I'm still working on it.
Another thing of course, is add GPS capablities. I was thinking about connecting the GPS device through an AB serial switch. The user would have to select which connection to use.

It was only a joke. Anyway I am working in the Handheld business. A second PalmOS device it's not a problem. The problem is more, that the Palm is limited with hardware connections with only one serial port....

I will try it on Monday with with HS-Cable and let you know!

Thanks you!

CrazyMelki

Ah, OK :)
Well, you know, the ultimate solution would have been a Palm device with a wireless ethernet interface. The problem of course is these devices (Symbol SPT1700 for example) are expensive. It's usually not a problem when I deign a mobile solution for a big company.

No wireless ethernet isn't a problem! Xircom has for PalmOS devices solutions! http://www.xircom.com/cda/page/0,1298,0-0-1_1-1576,00.html

But you have to start first with the Springboard driver, because I use personally a Visor .

bye

CrazyMelki

Looks great. Now I need a Palm.

Proud Owner of MK2 080000558 - 18gb Blue

May be you'll get it this Christmas :)

Ok, I've got the latest developer image on there .. I've also edited my config.ini file as specified. I've got the serial speed on both palm and the empeg set as specified...

When I click the refresh button in the palm app (once the serial is connected to the player) it says loading data .... and that's it.

I don't hear any harddrives churning out anything ... is there something else i should be noticing? do I need the player in standby mode or active mode?

is there any other indication I should get that this is working correctly?

I'd really like to avoid adding yet another conduit to my list of bulging entries if that's at all possible....

hope one of you guys can help me get this to work, it looks like fun!

greg

--
Rio Car (40Gig) Blue/Red/Green/Amber Face (Looking for 2.0!)
'01 Audi A4 2.8 Quattro

Go to http://www.psibits.com/PalmEmpeg and download the latest prc file. If you're still having a problem, let me know.
P.S. Make sure the speed is set to 115200.

KarimG: "Comments and suggestions are welcome."

Could you make it cooler?????

This is really excellent. I was dinking around with the idea of a Sony RM-X4S or RM-XM10 for the cockpit of my boat, but I think you just blew all that away. Now I have to figure out what Palm can generate enough contrast to best handle direct sunlight.

(OT: Anybody see the new backlit NEC notebook that supposedly loves direct sunlight?? Might have to get one of them next summer, for, ummm....work!)

Thanks, man! Wow.

Jim

That's a hardware Issue.
This kinda reminds of that old joke: How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
Ans: None! It's a hardware issue.

This kinda reminds of that old joke: How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
Ans: None! It's a hardware issue

Alternatively, they pronounce darkness a standard

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

Has anybody tried the ir connection in the meantime? This would be very cool!

I don't have a serial cable to connect my palm with my empeg. And in the car I don't have the serial line connected.

To use Palm's Ir with the RioCar unit, you need to hold Palm pretty close to it. That would beat the whole purpose of PalmEmpeg which is controlling RioCar when it's not visible (under the seat, in the trunk,...).
Modifying PalmEmpeg to use Ir is very easy, the problem is going to be having RioCar feed data through it's Ir. I would say some kernel modification would be required.

Karim,

An other question. What about to have the possiblity to choose form PalmEmpeg the Pref-Network and Connection Setting available? So we can use it also via Ethernet, Bluetooth ect...! :-) Or is this not possibl because of the special Output from the serial port?

Let's say we need a additional menu Connection:-)

Or people can use your Conduit instead of sync.

bye

CrazyMelki

I own a palm m505. It's possible to communicate (synchronize) with my desktop pc via ir and a distance of about 1 meter.
So is the empeg limiting the distance?
It would be great if I could remote control the empeg with the palm (search for a title on the palm [offline] --> bring the palm in front of the empeg --> play title on empeg)

I have yet to do some hacking on the Empeg's ethernet connection.
It should be rather easy to have PalmEmpeg communicate through an ethernet connection (sockets). I already have socket class library for Palm. I thought it was better to communicate through a serial cable since it is available for all Palms.
PalmEmpeg is written in C++, and the communication is handled through a seperate class, EmpegPlayer. This means, the application doesn't care about where the data is coming from (serial, ir, tcp/ip,...) as it is handled separately. The app makes calls like: EmpegPlayer::Open(), EmpegPlayer::Play(), EmpegPlayer::Next(), EmpegPlayer::SendCommand(),...
The EmpegPlayer class can be adjusted to use almost any source, through something like : EmpegPlayer::SetSource(UInt16 sourceID)
.

That sounds like a cool idea!
I'll look into it.

When we first played with the empeg's IrDA, I used some linux irobex programs to transfer a contact card from the palm to the empeg; this sort of thing should work just fine.

IIRC, IrDA kernel support is standard in mk2 kernels (it's not in mk1's as the memory overheard is big enough to be a bad idea in 8mb, users have to compile their own kernels for the mk1 if they want irda).

Hugo

how about pocketpc empeg control :)

That's not a bad idea!
I'll try to port the app to Windows.
Unfortuately, I don't have a CE device, so looks like I'll have to rely on the x86 emulator!

Got it, got it running, and man is it slow.

It's loading my playlist of about 3500 songs into it through Serial and it is taking about 1 second per song. At this rate, I am looking at a better part of an hour to get the playlists into the Palm. The interface is nice but will it have to do a complete sync every time? Can I output the csv file from emplode and HotSync it into the Palm to speed this up?

Greg

Greg,
The reason it's so slow is because there is no command provided by Empeg that sends a list of all songs through the serial connection. The minute there is such a thing, I will implement it.
The way it works, now, the Palm app, starts at the beginning of the play list, pauses the song, then moves to the next one. This process is slow, plus, if the Palm app moves too fast through the list, it gets desynchronized with the RioCar unit. I had to put a reasonable timeout period of a second for that reason.
The HotSync conduit, however, is much more faster, because it simply reads from a file (c:\playlist.txt), and sends it directly to Palm. May be that's what you should use for now, since you have so many songs.
Let me know about any other issues you might have.

There have been several features which were added to both the Palm app as well as the HotSync conduit. Few bugs were taken care of as well.
Please visit http://www.psibits.com/PalmEmpeg regularly to get the latest version.

Have you tried sending the database or playlists files in /empeg/var over irda using sz? They're binary, but you should be able to decode them, right?

_~= Dearing =~_
"WAY too happy about having #99."

I already considered that. The problem however is that the Empeg unit is under the seat, and the Palm device is by the driver's seat. I wanted some fast way to get the data through the serial cable which I'm already using.
Right now, I have two ways of doing it. One through the serial but it's slow since the Palm app starts at the begining of the playlist and keep moving. The problem is that it's slow (one song per second). The second method, which is very fast (50 songs per second), requires connecting Palm to a PC to HotSync through conduit which I don't want to do.

Thanks for suggestion.

If you started the player with the -s option and modified your init so that it called the player in the background, you should be able to keep your serial shell through the cable. Then you could sz or simply cat the database file (can you cat a binary file and read it correctly?). I've not tried starting the player in the background yet, would this work?
Just throwing ideas out there...
Jason

_~= Dearing =~_
"WAY too happy about having #99."

Yes you can cat binary files, although, it's more flexible to open the file and read data through a C program.
I'll have to look into it some more.
Thanks.

Does this help you in any way?

­­______________
Edwin de Vaan

Yes, thank you :)

You're welcome!

­­______________
Edwin de Vaan