I just wanted to post a thread where you can find a working version of a PDA/Pocket PC logger.

What is needed:
Tactrix cable
PDA/Pocket PC with USB Host adapter (in my case it is Acer n50 with USB host cable)
OS: the current version works with Windows Mobile 2003 and .Net compact framework 2.0

First you need to install FTDI drivers for Pocket PC - instructions are posted on FTDI website:
http://www.ftdichip.com/Documents/In...tion_Guide.pdf

I installed this driver into my pocket pc (Acer n50):
http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/D2XX...D2XXDriver.zip

I modified the inf file so it contains the PID ID of my cable. I do not use the serial emulation - connect directly through ftdi driver (attaching a zip file ftd2xx.zip which contains all 3 files that you just need to copy into your programs directory in pocket pc).

Attached is also a zipped exe file that you just copy to your PDA and run. Version with installed is zipped as well. For developers - zipped source code for Visual Basic enclosed enjoy

Credits go to johnbanks - his serial logger was my baseline

 

Cool! this is the 3rd version that I have seen...

 

In average I get 3-4 rows/sec and when above 80% TPS it stops logging some redundant items - and it increases to 5-6 rows.

The bottleneck seems to be FTDI driver - which slows the communication. As I cannot edit the driver itself - at the moment I have no idea how to improve the logger speed further. If anyone is interested in some code optimising (multi-thread or change the way I work with the forms there - you are welcome.

May be when johns finishes the DMA logging - this could be the way to have faster speed on a pocket logger.

 

It is probably the latency timer which really runs at 1ms on the PC and doesn't on the Pocket PC? Therefore blocks of data would move faster?

 

I am not sure - I just spoke with one guy who just knows more of this - and he told that while the system is communicating to USB it is just fully concentrating on this and doesnot allow for going to another "thread" - so this is what I know. That is why I think that doing one request and waiting for bulk of bytes - would be little bit faster.

 

Or do one request and do other things and then check for the bytes read? This is the way I thought of speeding up the PC stuff without going multithreaded.

 

Good idea - thanks - I will test

edit: tested - no improvement

 

There should be a way that you could move the driver priorty up in the registry.. I just did it with my bluetooth and it fixed alot of issues..

 

A slow SD card slows my logging compared with a fast one or writing to device memory.

 

I will give it a try

 

OK - I tried to log into memory instead of SD car - but still the same results.
With 27 items logged - I get cca 3 rows per second. It is enough for a dash display and informational logs as well.

Looking forward to have DMA logging built into this Pocket PC

 

does this work on phones?....its not PPC though, i have a att tilt with windows mobile...would be nice i guess

 

You phone would need to have a "USB host" connector - I am not sure if any of the mobile phones has this.

 

Will not work on the Tilt, it doesn't have the USB host ability. There are only a handful of phones/pda's that do.