9 replies to this topic

[hucker]

for a work project I need a cell phone that has a hardwired serial port. I know back in the PDA days some PDA's had this capability on the docking stations. This far I haven't found anything that can do RS232. Right now my best option is Bluetooth on a windows mobile based phone. The guy specing it really wants a hardwired solution. I haven't found the right Google search to find if it exists.

[Dan (electron)]

It exists, but just like with PDA's, you will have to look at industrial solutions, which are much more expensive. Here is an example:

http://www.embedded-...stry News/15946

[elcano]

I wonder if the OS 3.0 equipped iPhone will be capable of accesing serial devices, as part of their new accesory support upgrade.

Part of the overall solution at Airclic is a barcode reader that is attached to a Motorola v950. I wonder it this phone can provide a serial interface.

[hucker]

I wonder if the OS 3.0 equipped iPhone will be capable of accesing serial devices, as part of their new accesory support upgrade.

Part of the overall solution at Airclic is a barcode reader that is attached to a Motorola v950. I wonder it this phone can provide a serial interface.

The iphone 3.0 thing looks like a winner. When I researched it a month ago I heard rumblings about support for device interfaces but in typical apple style there was nothing. The key piece of info is that there *is* a serial port out the bottom of an iPhone but it *was* only available on debug builds of the OS and thus not available at all to app developers. I think there was enough info in the links to surmise that that port will now be enabled (heck I'd be happy with a bluetooth com port).

Thanks for the link!

[znelbok]

you can find cheap wavexom gsm modems on ebay. They can do voice as well.

I have used one for SMS messaging from my CQC server.

Mick

[Joel Sanderson]

Did you get an answer? I have always done serial on my WinMo using bluetooth .. Never had an app that needed a wired port?

[miamicanes]

Many first-generation HTC Android phones (Dream, Hero, Droid Eris) have serial ports sharing pins with the usb port and/or headphone jack. See http://code.google.c...ardware_devices

Ditto, for many Samsung Android phones. In particular, the Galaxy S (i9000, Captivate, Vibrant, Epic4G, Fascinate, Mesmerize, probably others).



also,
http://forum.xda-dev...ad.php?t=756988

Your best bet with modern phones is probably ioio ( http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10748 ). IMHO, ioio is easier to use and more inherently powerful than Google's official Arduino 2560-based ADK . The main difference is that ioio does most of the heavy lifting for you & makes it painless, and it works on almost every Android phone ever made, but requires that the phone have USB debugging enabled.

ADK is kind of a pain to use right now (it's more a collection of low-level capabilities you're responsible for implementing yourself, kind of like much of Android's API in general) and only works on select Android phones (2.3 or newer, with kernel support compiled in. The Photon doesn't, as of 2.3.5. Sigh.) It does *not* (by explicit Google decree) require that USB debugging be enabled. If you're connecting questionable devices of unknown heritage & trustworthiness from China to a rooted phone, this might be a big deal.

I think IOIO will eventually be ADK-compatible, but I believe that's still slightly experimental & incomplete. Right now, the developer's more urgent goals are enabling it to work with a generic usb network interface (it already works with a $3 bluetooth interface) and with PCs, since most of ioio's users prefer its original, nicer API to ADK's official, but "less nice" API.

At the really cheap end of the scale, there's also a project & board that uses the headphone jack as a pseudo-modem, but that particular solution seems to be a little more brittle & temperamental than other solutions.

Edited by miamicanes, 08 June 2012 - 10:27 PM.

[Work2Play]

miamicanes - that was a 2-year old thread you dug up to answer!

[miamicanes]

Yeah, I noticed right after I replied. Oh well... maybe someone will find it useful :-)

Sent from my MB855 using Tapatalk 2

[Work2Play]

I was going to reply at first, then I noticed the dates too... I used to use (and have sitting a few feet from me) an Airlink Raven - it's a cell modem with a regular RS232 interface; and you can use ip2serial drivers to make it like a device 2000ft away is directly connected, as long as you have some error correction when you don't get the expected responses.

Nowadays there are also a lot of cool serial interfaces for iOS, but they don't let you treat it like a modem; however, being able to update Cisco IOS from your iPad is pretty handy.