Personal Data Assistant Applications

A number of handheld devices fall into the catagorie of personal data assistants (PDA's). These are small highly portable computing devices designed to be hand held and in many cases to fit in your shirt pocket. Applications can be written for PDA's to enable them to do almost anything a desktop or laptop computer can do. This includes surfing the web, keeping track of appointments, bussness applications and control and monitoring of external devices. In many cases PDA's include a modem, serial ports, and pcmcia slots which can accomodate ethernet ports. Some PDA's are large enough to have their own keyboards while the smaller ones have touch screens.

PDA's

I have developed applications for the following types of PDA's:

PPC's. These are Palm Personal Computing devices designed to fit in the palm of one hand. Typical size is H5"xW3"xD3/4".

HPC's. These are Handheld Personal Computing devices for handheld use. Typical size is H4"xW9"xD3/4".

HPC Pro. The HPC Pro is similar to the HPC with a larger screen. These are typically H6"xW10xD1".

Most of the applications that I have written for PDA's are of the control and monitoring type. A typical application would include a communication link between the PDA and a device under control. The communication link could be a serial RS-232 / RS-422 / RS- 485 link or an ethernet connection. The device might be a communications transport of some type where portable control and monitoring may be required. The control and monotoring application might include provisions for setting up a configuration for the target device and then downloading that setup or provisions for real time control of the device with status being returned from the device. This could be accomplished by walking up to the device, plugging a serial cable from the PDA into it, and running the application. For true portablity there are wireless ethernet local area networks now available. In this case the PDA would have a pcmcia card with an ethernet connection using wireless technology (an antena instead of a coaxial cable) making it truely portable throughout the facility.