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Hi Rick
Save yourself a headache and stay away from Raw Ir,
which means do not use the MCP2120. For simple apps like yours it
used to be the way to go, but the moving target that is Palm
(any PDA really) devices and their variable IrDA support says to stick with
IrComm. The 2150 is a good product though it is not without it's faults
with respect to some compatibility bugs. Generally speaking it is
better. There are other Ir protocol chips available as well as software
stacks for high end PICs. Also, 64K is a fair amount of data, so you would
wind up putting some additional protocol layers on top of raw ir anyway.
It comes for "free" with IrComm.
To work with the MCP2150 (or MCP2140 would perhaps
be a more cost effective solution for you if you can live with 9600 baud), you
will want to use SerialManager and open with the
'ircm' argument. This is the "virtual ir comm
port". Note that the z22 and 2150 have an incompatability. I have
not tested the z22 with the 2140.
IrLibrary is good if you want to employ your own
protocol over IrDA, though it makes the protocol chip question a bit more
ambiguous. If you want to run IrLPT for example, you will need to use
IrLibrary.
Exchange Manager is to be used for
OBEX (ie beaming) only in this context.
Unless you have a trailer full of a specific palm
model, I would recommend you not be too concerned with a specific device,
because as soon as you count on them, they're GONE.
hope this helps.
Frank
CFG Solutions, Inc.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2006 4:30
PM
Subject: Irda confusion
Hi,
I am pretty new to Palm os and have quite a bit
of confusion regarding communicating via the IR port. My application is to
simply down load about 64k bytes of binary data from an embedded device -- a
simple data logger. That device has a PIC microcontroller and a
Microchip MCP2150 IrDA controller. I'm not set on the MCP2150, and a
MCP2120 might actually be better suited. I want to download the binary
data onto a Tungsten E. It's cheap, fast, & has great display
capabilities.
Let me break my question into 2
parts:
1) While scouting around news forums &
the Microchip tech bulletins I found information that leads me to believe that
the Tungsten E isn't suited for IrDA communications. The reason seems to
be the number of BOF's requested vs. the number of them sent/ignored by the
T-E. Is there a workaround other than use another handheld? Does
the problem occur only for the Ircomm layer? Will things work okay for
Tiny TP layer? Raw IR? If no workaround, does the Tungsten E2 have
the problem fixed and has it been tested?
2) Being new to Palm development, I'm
completely overwhelmed by the many ways to communicate via the IR port with
the SDK. When would I use the Serial manager & when would I use the
IR manager? Exchange manager? Any other ways that I don't know
about? I really haven't seen a fantastic tutorial that explaines WHY a
specific approach should be taken. Tutorials & books seem to present
code without discussing why things are the way they are.
What I would love is for someone who has done
something like this before to tell me something like, "Look at this part of
the API Documentation on page ____, and pay close attention to ____, and these
steps need to be in this order because ____." Kind of a 'do it this way
because it works' approach. I'm too ignorant to reinvent the
wheel.
A few helpful hints would be greatly
appreciated.
Thanks a bunch,
Rick
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