From: "Scott Parsley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > The application I am developing needs to be able to send AT (modem?) > commands from a Palm PDA to a mobile phone either by cable, infrared, or > bluetooth. This would be using the phone connection that the user has > already set up int the Preferences. I'm looking at doing this for Garnet > (current target PDA is a T5). (snip) > I'm guessing I need to be doing something with the Serial Library is this > correct? However, after reading the programmers companion I'm even more > confused - might just be I don't understand some of the terminology. > Yes. And yes, it can be confusing and there are some gotchas for different versions of Palm OS although from memory most of them are 3.5 and earlier so you should be fine if you're aiming for modern devices.
> Will the code to send/receive information differ depending on the method of > connection, or is this all handled by the Palm interfaces? > Both IR and cable are just serial connections so the higher level code won't change at all. I think the bluetooth layers operate differently, but mostly in how the connection is established rather than how data is exchanged, although it's been a while. You should still be able to isolate the AT command processing module from the connectivity module. > Does anyone have a source of information that might help me find an approach > to getting started with this? I've searched the newsgroups and knowledge > base, but so far come up with a blank. > You don't get a lot of this stuff done - it's a fairly specialist subject with lot's of nasty surprises that tends to be isolated to people working for companies who sell phone or SMS software (and who therefore find it difficult to publish chunks of their code). Try google searches, as there are people out there doing this sort of stuff for entertainment. The actual serial connection stuff isn't too difficult, as long as you realise that you need to build a call to a background processing module into your main app loop. That makes sure that you poll the serial line fairly regularly - you'll generally want to use a tick timer to activate this so that you're not calling the background module for every single event (events tend to arrive in bursts) and look up on the forum for my discussions / raves about problems with Palm OS locking out the app event loop (a search for custom events is probably a good start to get a feel for the issue). Once you've got a simple framework up and running that can handle the 'AT', 'OK' conversation everything else is about finding out how AT commands vary from one manufacturer to another, how Nokia will document commands for a phone that the phone doesn't actually implement, etc. Have fun. Chris Tutty -- For information on using the Palm Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/forums/
