• Registered: 2007-02-20
  • Posts: 26

Topic: Proposed Data Classes

Hey...
I've been digging into the FLASH stuff and have found no straightforward ways of getting data to/from the serial/USB port.  I believe the Chumby would be a lot more useful if these ports were supported.  FLASH is a great means of displaying data... coupling this to a great way of getting data to where FLASH can see it would complete the picture.  Providing a generic 'class' to support basic UART operation (UART over USB as well) would open up some new markets for Chumby...

Any ideas?

Bruce

  • Registered: 2006-08-29
  • Posts: 204

Re: Proposed Data Classes

The USB port is meant for thumb drives, not for connections.
However, I do agree it would be nice for that serial port to be documented.

I've been using ssh, and if you know your way around unix, its fine.

  • Duane
  • Duane
  • Blue Octy
  • Offline
  • From: San Diego, CA
  • Registered: 2006-08-24
  • Posts: 8,197

Re: Proposed Data Classes

The biggest issue with USB serail ports is that, unlike, mass storage, keyboard and mice, that there's no standard protocols, so there's no such thing as a generic driver.

Even on Windows, most USB serial devices require the installation of drivers.

We'd have to look at the impact of adding Linux drivers for a wide enough range of the devices out there.

Flash, in general, is not really designed to allow that kind of low-level access to the device.  We'll look into it though.

Duane's Website

  • Registered: 2006-08-27
  • Posts: 37

Re: Proposed Data Classes

In theory, since FlashLite 2.1 should support XMLSocket (does it work ? does it work on the Chumby) you should be able to write a local "server" application that gets the data from the external device and returns them on the socket.

Since your widget is not "portable" anyway (you need to have the serial adapter on your chumby or whatever other external device) it should be ok to also have a local server running on your chumby.

Or, you could have the serial port connected to one of your PCs and that PC run the "data server" that your widget reads from.