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Using PDAs as a PC Control Panel?
Chase asks: "Has anyone ever used an old PDA as a control panel for a larger headless system? I was planning on installing a computer in my car to do a variety of things and I happen to have a few old PDAs laying around gathering dust. (HP320LX, HP360LX, PalmPilot Pro). The general idea here is that you could power the PDA from the car and use a null modem cable to create a connection between the PDA and the headless computer. I have a matrix oribital display and compatible number pad, but the PDA touch screen with buttons and back light seems like it would be much cooler."
M$ terminal server, with the citrix metaframe client on a iPAQ could work quite nicely - especially if you simply used an wireless network card at each end.
You could probably manage the same with Linux - not sure if the iPAQ ditribution supports wireless cards though...
Yes, it's possible, and I;ve done it in various ways over the years. You have a multitude of ways of doing it, so stand back.
One is using terminal emulation. I'm sure you're already thought of this, though it kind of negates the coolness of having a touch-screen.
Second is using a telepresence package like VNC or PC-Anyhwere. This will either require eithernet-enabled palmtops or for you to fave the host machine be a dial-up PPP server for the paltop; this is because VNC is IP based, and you need to give the paltop an IP. There are VNC clients available for CE, PalmOS and EPOC32.
Third is like the above in that you need to set up a PPP link, or ethernet between the two, but in this case the idea is using a web browser on the palmtop to conrtol the PC. This allows only very limited control, but it would look spiffy because you could form the UI (web page) into anything you want. But you will need to write scripts on teh host machine that will execute all teh commands when you click a link on the palmtop.
Fourth and final is making a custom control program that either worhs through IP or serial. The program can just send the text commands to the host PC, and interpret the results in the contrxt of the program, making the coolest UI you want. It's a lot like using the web page approach but with more flexibility, but with a lot more effort too. And I'm not sure if GCC is available for WinCE yet, so yo'd have to pay a few hundred bucks for the VB/VC++ WinCE toolkit.
WHew. Well, that's my exhaustive list of possibilities.
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Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
This page should give you a good set of info and links.