[aprssig] Tomtom's For APRS (Question)

[Jason Rausch]

> Even cell phones and tablets, powerful as they are, do not
> support plugging in just any USB peripheral.

Actually, that is true for most, but my new Acer Android A500 Tablet actually has a USB A SOCKET that accepts USB thumb drives, USB mice and USB keyboards.  The support has been worked into Android Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich.  Does this help with the subject at hand?  No, not yet, but we might see extended support down the road to support standard USB chipsets such as the FTDI and Prolific USB-based devices.

With support for FTDI and Prolific, we can start adapting more legacy serial devices to a "USB" interface.  I put USB in quotes because anyone that has worked with these IC's knows that it's really a USB to serial interface.  A virtual comport is still used in the OS to talk to the interface.  Since Android is more like a Linux flavor, I would expect something more like a tty001, tty002 and so on ID.

Just food for thought!

Jason Rausch - KE4NYV
RPC Electronics, LLC
www.rpc-electronics.com


--- On Sun, 4/1/12, Jason KG4WSV <kg4wsv at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Jason KG4WSV <kg4wsv at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [aprssig] Tomtom's For APRS (Question)
> To: "TAPR APRS Mailing List" <aprssig at tapr.org>
> Date: Sunday, April 1, 2012, 9:53 PM
> On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 7:47 PM, Pat
> Cook <kb0oxd at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Sounds like what's going to have to happen is TNC's to
> convert to USB
> > since EVERYTHING is going that way.  What is holding
> back TNC
> > manufacturers?  What's holding back RADIO
> manufacturers?
> 
> I dunno, knowledge of how USB works?
> 
> The host side of USB requires a lot of processing - there's
> a reason
> generic USB peripheral support is only seen on full general
> purpose
> computers.  Even cell phones and tablets, powerful as
> they are, do not
> support plugging in just any USB peripheral.
> 
> As someone has pointed out, there's also the driver issue.
> Even
> something as simple as a serial data stream (i.e. USB to
> RS232) has a
> large number of very different implementations.  Even
> though the
> standard provides for such an interface in the form of USB
> CDC,
> practically no vendor actually uses it (the OT USB and
> latest
> generation of Arduino are the only exceptions I can think
> of), and of
> course microsoft screwed up support for it.
> 
> RS232 is simple, requires little processing power, and can
> transmit
> data reliably across long distances (hundreds of feet).
> 
> IMO the USB interface on the D72 greatly limits the radio's
> utility.
> I hope I don't see any more USB interfaces replacing RS232
> on radios.
> 
> -Jason
> kg4wsv
> 
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