[TI-H] Re: reopen a discussion on radio transfer link??????????


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[TI-H] Re: reopen a discussion on radio transfer link??????????




Hi, Ronald!

> > First of all, yes, we (Alexander, Marc and me) accomplished a
> > radio connection between one or more TI-82s and a PC. The
> > main goal was to give the TIs internet access, which is why the
> > project is called "Mobile internet access for graphing
> > calculators".
> > [...]
>
> there is already a TELNET8X program, which works with the grey
> graph link only. It's capable of Telnet (e.g. SMTP&POP3 :-D ). I
> don't know if it's different, but it's just downloadable from ticalc.org.

I know about TELNET82 and by that of its limitations. First of all one would
need a Gray Link, PIClink or (fast)AVRlink, which involves some money. Then
you need to have eithar a Ricochet modem (information on that should be
available on ticalc.org, too) or a cell phone in order to get wireless
internet access. Either way you're up to pay lots of money on this, every
minute you're online with one calc. The advantage however would be that each
calc has its own very mobile internet access. Our project is based on a
server (i.e. a PC) which has some kind of internet connection and sort of
functions as a gateway between the internet and lots of calculators (up to
250, theoretically). Thereby it's only necessary to pay for the PC's
internet access which might be no cost at all, if the server is i.e.
situated in a school which has high speed internet access for free (our
former school has ;-). Some more about money: The disadvantage of our
solution is, that there's also some hardware (for doing the radio
communication) which one has to buy in advantage. Once you bought it, there
are no or little further costs, so in the long run, one is better of with
our solution, I think.

So much for the hardware, TELNET82 also has a somewhat bad user interface. I
don't want to blame Justin Karneges, the author, but the TI-82 (and even the
TI-92) has quite some hardware limitations compared to a computer, running a
telnet at 80x25 chars on a 17" monitor and a 100+ keys keyboard. Telnet
however is made for computers instead of calculators so the user interface
can't be very good and I don't know any way to work around this. The user
interface of our solution is 100% self made and by that gives us the
opportunity to utilize best the calculator's abilities - while avoiding its
disabilities. This means that the interface is menu driven, it's only that
much text on the screen, as the calc can display, to see more, the user can
scroll up/down and whenever the user has to enter data, there are quite
comfortable edit fields. So if you'd like to write an e-mail you don't have
to connect to port 25 of an SMTP server and mess with SMTP commands or
utilize a program like pine which is designed for 80x25 chars. Additionally
you don't lose data if you're typing fast, as we included a microcontroller
which does all the time critical communication while the TI can
"concentrate" on user I/O.

Bye, Burkart



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