Topics

1

Deals and Great Z Buys / Group Buy On Symbol 802.11b?

« on: December 17, 2004, 07:02:55 pm »

There's a surplus dealer on ebay offering two lots of new Symbol 802.11b cards at "Buy it now" prices of $400 for 25 (ends Sunday),  or $200 for 10 (ends Tuesday).

Shipping from the seller is included,  so they'd wind up costing about $20-25 each,  including Priority Mail within the U.S.

Based on what I've read,  that's a really good price for what seems to be a good card.

If enough people sign up,  I'll go ahead and buy one of the lots and parcel them out.

One word of warning:  because of holiday shipping delays,  they might not arrive here until after Christmas.  Since I'll be leaving town on the 27th or 28th for about 10 days,  there's a good chance you wouldn't get yours until about the 10th or 12th of January.

2

Accessories / IR Keypad (not full keyboard) Suggestions?

« on: March 04, 2004, 12:16:28 am »

I\'ve got zRoadmap running in my truck (more or less:  I still haven\'t figured out how to set it up with waypoints so it can play \"navigator\" and warn me of upcoming turns and such),  but it\'s awkward,  and downright dangerous,  to try to control it using \"normal\" screen taps and such.

What I\'d like to do is connect a simple keypad to it,  and hack the zRoadmap code so I can do common operations like \"zoom in\",  \"zoom out\",  and \"How far to the next instruction?\" with a a single push of a button I don\'t have to take my eyes off the road to find.  I\'m thinking about 8-10 buttons max:  more than that,  and the problem of finding the right one crops up again.  The minimum is probably about 5 buttons.

The serial port is already tied up with the GPS,  so using it is out.  I\'m thinking maybe IrDA,  or a consumer remote with a few big buttons.  Although this poses the challenge of mounting it so it can communicate reliably with the Z.

I could use something like a PocketTop keyboard for development,  but that\'d be too awkward to mount in the truck,  and having so many buttons makes it only slightly better than using the screen.

If necessary,  I\'d be willing to desolder the IR LED from a consumer remote,  and put it on a wire so I could mount the remote in a convenient location without having to worry about having it pointed right at the Z.

I\'ve thought about Bluetooth,  but,  while it would be be fun,  I\'d rather do something that could be used by lots of other people.  The extra $150 or so needed to for a Bluetooth link would probably turn most potential users off.

Has anybody successfully tried something that could be adapted to this purpose?

Thanks,

Ran