Slashdot Mirror
HP Releases Hackable ARM-Based Calculator
mikeselectricstuff writes "HP's 20b business consultant calculator isn't the sort of thing that would normally interest the average Slashdotter, but HP has released a Devkit for it, including schematics and source for a sample application, and they appear to be actively encouraging people to re-purpose it. Maybe the engineers thought a business calculator was just too boring for their hardware? The calculator is based on an Atmel ARM chip, and it has a bootloader and JTAG interface to allow user applications to be written and downloaded, turning a boring calculator into anything you can do within the constraints of the hardware."
But how do I embed the calculator in my arm? Knife and some glue?
Of course most customers will use this as is. I'm thankful that HP isn't so paranoid of what their niche customers might do. The right of people to tweak products to suit their needs is a right that needs to be preserved.
This is a boring sig
Does it run NetBSD?
You just got troll'd!
Now I can't trust my HP 20b Business Consultant Financial Calculator anymore.
How do I know someone didn't add code to my calculator to return the wrong answer on specific inputs?
HP calculators have always been hackable. The 48 S/SX/G/GX calculators had a large and active scene. I spent countless hours coding on it. The Saturn processor was very nice to code on.
{{.sig}}
Might be nice to use it as an password-pad
and still have an RPN calculator at the same time.
nothing beats the soviet-build-like 12c, tho'
I can't see the point of it really. 20 years ago it would have been fantastic. 10 years ago it would have been newsworthy. 5 years ago it might have been vaguely interesting. But now everyone's got laptops and smartphones, what's a fancy calculator going to do that they can't?
In Soviet Russia, calculators re-purpose you!
You just got troll'd!
I thought it was a breakable arm calculator! Phew!
But can it play Van Halen's "Eruption"?
Whoever is in charge of decisions like this at HP really needs to be hired at Apple.
nooo! that leg doesn't go there! CRACK!! ouch...
ya know, i'd rather not have that. i'll get a calc proggie for my phone.
The display is not even as good as the old 42S. There's no mini-USB to talk to it, recharge it, and push code with.
For the US$11.70 unit CPU cost, they could have bagged a uC with integrated USB. But they were smart to stick with the single differentiating factor: multimonth battery life.
They preferred to let it be hacked now, instead of after the improvements. The policy is brave and speaks volumes.
The L series is a typical AT91SAM7 32bit chip that should work with the usual openocd toolset. It does not look like HP is using an RTOS like FreeRTOS which, among other things, has a udp/tcp/ip stack that I like to use on the AT91SAM7X series which contain an embedded MAC (no apple fanbois, thats a Medium Access Controller). The code is using IAR compilers :( so you can't just dive in to using the Gnu arm toolchain without some serious homework 1st creating a makefile and tweeking various files.
The engineers did populate the connectors for the JTAG and provide unpopulated pads for ADC, PWM, SPI, and basic digital I/O, so I would say that anyone looking to get started in embedded electronics could start here, they'd just be locked into using IAR. Also a display is awesome for providing a UI, something most embedded dev kits lack!
Thanks HP, it really is nice that you guys considered the hacker community as customers.
EOF
I bet the first thing I'd turn it into would be a brick.
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
Some people need to learn that a hardhack is not the same as a difficult hack or a hack that involves something running on hardware. If that were the case, all hacking could be considered a hardhack.
Maybe after I figure out what actual purpose my Altair 8800 can serve, I'll try to figure this one out
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
With multiple ADC channels this thing would make a nice data logger. Hopefully, someone with time on their hands will add WiFi and TCP/IP stack. I would like to track a few key parameters in my vehicle and having a cheap data logger phone home via WiFi each time I pull into the garage would be sweet.
That's the problem with you GUI-raised kids. A knife and arm and cuneiform is all anyone needs.
To me, the most interesting aspect of the dev kit is that the HP calculator group did not even have the engineering resources available internally to draw that simple little schematic and instead outsourced the hardware design to the Taiwanese design and manufacturing house Inventec. Pretty sad that HP - once a premier engineering company - does not even design their own hardware anymore. I also like how they created the pdf version of the schematic with a trial version of some pdf writer.
http://opensrc.sec.samsung.com/document/Getting_Familiar_with_uClinuxARM2_6.html
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
Different universities usually have their own preferred calculator for use on their courses and exams. My university has made the Casio FX-85 series as the officially permitted calculator. What are the choices in other universities?
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
People have been doing hardhacks to HP calcs for decades.
Here is a good place to go for info on HP stuff.
http://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/forum.cgi?read=139798#139798
Under heavy use (e.g. chemistry class), the four AAAs in my HP 50g calculator will last maybe a month. I use rechargeables, which have come a long way since the old days, but it's still a drag. I love the calculator, though.
Breakfast served all day!
I had a 28C and a similarly state-of-the-art savvy prof.
And some really tough stats exams.
You, errr, can do the math.
Then there was the one about the prof I had for Accounting II. This naive business person allowed everyone to bring a half sheet of 8.5x11 paper to the exam, containing any formulas one wanted to bring to the exam on one side of the paper. As a programmer who translated business rules into formulas all day long, I knew what to do.
Let's see.
Good quality paper. $1.
Bic extra fine point pen, the "accountant" model, to add appropriate humor. $2.
A literal mind which led to the following:
"ANYTHING I can express as a formula is legal to put on this sheet?" verified by prof... I asked... and the look on her face when she first saw my formula sheet. Priceless.
Add highlighters to break each chapter's worth of formulas into easily-located areas on the page. Combine over the course of several hours.
Results: A work of art that I was thankfully still young enough to read without a magnifying glass, a classroom full of students and a prof whose jaws hit their desks when they observed the ink density of my half sheet of letter size paper and multi-color separator lines splitting the information up into sections (and even more amazement by those who got close enough to see the details), an A on the final, and one prof who would from that point forward supply her OWN formula sheets for her classes. I daresay that nearly all essential informaton in the textbook was replicated as formulas on my formula sheet. Truth be told, the prof got a kick out of it... but didn't want anyone else to do it again in the future. She insisted on my turning over my "formula sheet" to her, as a reminder to herself of why to NEVER let anyone do that again. Who would have ever thought a CS student would out-hack an accounting class full of business students?! Oh... right. Most of the population of /. ;-)
The NEW HP35s is the first classic RPN calc released by HP in years. It is a pretty good calculator, not without its own quirks. But it is the first HP calculator in years that is truly in the spirit of its illustrious ancestors.
Hello,
When I first started working on trying to make the 20b hackable and 'lobyed' to make the SDK available to the public, I dreamed of it making it on /. I thought of as being the ultimate sign of suxess....
Today, my dream became real. Thank you all.
regards, cyrille
HP Calculator division
A calculator will know that the result to the question above is 7 while most of those calculators bundled with a smartphone will give 9 as a result.
In fact about 85% of the calculators you can buy for a smartphone will give the wrong result of 9 as well.
And none of the calculators you can buy for a smartphone can be programmed. MyCalul for Symbian 9 has formula evaluation - which is good - but still not programmable.
The only programmable calculators for a smart phones I know of are the one I wrote myself (http://uiq3.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Office/FX-602P) and Free42 (http://free42.sourceforge.net/).
Both of which are simulations of real calculators (Casio FX-602P and HP 42 respectively). And that is telling in it self.
And for Laptops the situation is the same - mostly I use an HP 16C Emulator and my FX-602P Simulator. Mac OS has a nice Calculator - almost as good as an HP 16C but not programmable.
Actually I wanted to buy an HP 16C - but they go for $300 and more at eBay. And this is telling as well considering that HP stopped producing them 1989.
Martin
I take it you never heard of Symbian Signed and Java Verified then. I fact I do write my own calculator (http://uiq3.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Office/FX-602P) and it will only work properly when you hack you phone to deactivate Java Verified.
So No: the iPhone is not the only phone which needs hacking.
Martin
Sure - but Hello World does not need any "Capabilities" which which require you to sign your application.
Martin
New openly hackable calculator? A dream come true! ARM is good, HP has the rep, and... a single-chip solution with 6kB RAM and 128kB FLASH? Uh-oh, I guess we slipped into the nightmare section.
Worse yet, it's a business calculator with limited alphanumeric LCD-module.
Oh well, back to waiting for Qonos.
I had a friend who made formula sheet like that. (in word with equation boxes) But the professor just asked for the word file and let students in the next class use it. The tests weren't about rote.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
At least for a while, everything I read about the successors to the 48 series like my 48GX were inferior to the older units.
How is the 50G? Can it compare to the old 48GX? Or is it flimsy and unreliable like some of the 48's immediate successors?
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
HP is a bit late coming to the party, TI has had "hackable" calculators for years now.
In fact, I bought my first TI just so I could have an affordable Z80 platform to program on. But it's nice to see HP *finally* getting with the program (no pun intended).
BTW, check out ticalc.org
I dream in binary.