Dive Computers, iPads and the last century?
- Thread starter ariddett
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The great thing about standards is, we got plenty of 'em. And we're not afraid to use them.What my Leonardo actually has is an IR LED blinking into IR eye in the "uplink" cradle. The cradle has IR-to-serial converter (National Instruments I believe), where "serial" refers to the actual communication standard known as old-style RS-232 serial: 3+ wires. Then it has a "serial" serial to the USB "4-wire serial" converter (Proliant as they're about the only ones making those things). So my operating system needs low-level software "drivers" for the USB, the Proliant chip, and the NI chip, all playing nice together. So that the system can present a "virtual" "serial" COM port to the dive log app that actually knows how to talk "serial standard" to the Leonardo "device at the low level". Clean and simple, right?
undrwater
Contributor
I was using "standard" more loosely than in an IEEE sense.
I believe android is capable of communicating with your Leonardo assuming someone is willing to do some kernel hacking and software development.
Definitely not clean and simple.
I believe android is capable of communicating with your Leonardo assuming someone is willing to do some kernel hacking and software development.
Definitely not clean and simple.
The problem being you can push the same serial RS-232 byte stream over bluetooth with no extra drivers needed; USB does not AFAIK provide any actual communication protocols so you need the driver that knows how to talk to your USB-connected DC; an IR DC sends the same RS-232 byte stream but requires a driver for the USB-to-serial and a driver for the IR-to-serial components before you can get to the bytes. And those are sourced from some third parties and are typically obsolete by the time the DC gets to end-user: you may get some info from Pelagic on their USB link-ups, but good luck talking to Seiko about Proliant chips. So the emphasis here is on some hacking: the IR ones could easily require quite a bit more.
You are correct about this.
In fact we were the first company worldwide to release a BLE product (bluebuddy) for the diving industry in 2013.
More specific to the OP, our DCbuddy device is the first BLE based device that allows a diver to use his/her smartphone/tablet to retrieve logs from a dive computer. DCbuddy supports most dive computers and is supported by 3 apps: divePAL, MacDive and Dive Log.
Unfortunately DCbuddy does not support Scubapro dive computers as there was not interest from Scubapro in supporting our development efforts.
NFC is even better than BLE for this purpose, but one big advantage of the wired USB hook-up is you could provide more bells and whistles for manipulating the DC from the PC. Or at least it would be easier to do than doing it over an RFCOMM link.
Why? Could you please elaborate?
I can't find NFC on my iPhone
Well, availability in a particular device aside... With NFC's very short radius one could ignore all the pairing, interference, and security issues. If you have to physically place your DC on the uplink cradle, it's pretty hard to accidentally pair with a wrong cellphone. Potentially this could cut entire layers of complexity out of the software stack.
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