Semi-OT, Wireless Graphing Calculator Link?

[Banana fanna fo fanna]

I have a Ti-83 Plus and I was thinking of any way to have it communicate via radio waves (not IR). I can buy an extra cable and cut it to get at the wires.

I can program the driver if required, but I'm pretty clueless about hardware. Anyone have any ideas? Is there something like a generic "modem" for wireless?

[DeeZ]

A simple, but expensive solution can be found at http://www.moxa.com/
(that may have a tad more functionality than you want)


You could also use a dumb modem along with some RF transmitter/reciever (FM?).  It could be a tough hardware project, but it sounds fun- and it's a lot cheaper than the former.

Good luck.

[Camel]

I would suggest starting out with a non-wireless link -- a couple of years ago I created a serial cable from a spare link cable. Then, you would be given the opportunity to write the driver. You could later enhance the project with a couple of RF transmitter/recievers.

[Adron]

Serial and wireless are rather different - on wireless you have so much noise that you have to be aware of and handle.

[Camel]

One can get a pre-made transmitter/reciever unit that could, in theory, be connected to a serial port on one end and the cable on the other. The idea behind this strategy is that St0rm will not be forced to purchase any hardware until he knows what he is getting into.

[Adron]

One can get a pre-made transmitter/reciever unit that could, in theory, be connected to a serial port on one end and the cable on the other. The idea behind this strategy is that St0rm will not be forced to purchase any hardware until he knows what he is getting into.

Just beware that once he hooks up the transmitter/receiver units, he'll start dropping bits/bytes and possibly getting garbage bits/bytes inserted.

[iago]

You would need some program not unlike tcp, where lost packets could be detected, and bad ones could be checked and re-requested.  Sounds like fun

[Camel]

Just beware that once he hooks up the transmitter/receiver units, he'll start dropping bits/bytes and possibly getting garbage bits/bytes inserted.

The unit is supposed to take care of that; I'm not talking about just a simple transmitter/reciever.

[Adron]

Just beware that once he hooks up the transmitter/receiver units, he'll start dropping bits/bytes and possibly getting garbage bits/bytes inserted.

The unit is supposed to take care of that; I'm not talking about just a simple transmitter/reciever.

Oh ok. Well, that unit will probably be rather expensive.

[iago]

Which, I think, is why he recommended playing with a serial cable first :-)

[Adron]

You could also go straight for a not-so-expensive receiver/transmitter and accept handling noise yourself.

[Banana fanna fo fanna]

Was thinking of that route myself

[Skywing]

You could also go straight for a not-so-expensive receiver/transmitter and accept handling noise yourself.

Keep in mind that you have rather limited processing power on the calculator.  You may want to make sure that handling all of the error correction and noise processing won't be too much for the calculators CPU.

[Adron]

Keep in mind that you have rather limited processing power on the calculator.  You may want to make sure that handling all of the error correction and noise processing won't be too much for the calculators CPU.

True, but if you adapt the signalling rate to the calculator's abilities, it shouldn't be much of a problem.

[Camel]

True, but if you adapt the signalling rate to the calculator's abilities, it shouldn't be much of a problem.

In my experience, it's already slow as hell to get anything useful on my calculator. Last time I tried to transfer Mirage OS (which is under 40k) it took about five minutes.