[aprssig] Tomtom's For APRS (Question)

[Sander Pool]

Hi,

While I certainly have nothing against POSP (Plain Old Serial Port) the 
movement towards USB for embedded devices has begun. You've heard of the 
Raspberry PI and other very low cost computers running Linux. These have 
USB ports that work fine with all kinds of devices, including FTDI and 
Prolific Serial adapters. With the Raspberry PI costing about as much as 
an Arduino but with orders of magnitude more capability there will be 
little reason to futz with AVRs and PICs anymore. Even the simplest 
devices will run SOCs with Linux.

As an aside, there is a USB host shield for the Arduino and it may be 
possible to support various USB devices if their protocols are open. 
Doesn't sound like a very pleasant exercise to be honest.

I have a D72 and I like how easy it is to hook up to my netbook. At the 
same time I see the limitation of that interface so I wish it had both 
USB and serial. It is likely that the radio has a separate USB 
controller which would enable the desperate tinker to intercept the TTL 
level serial data. That should be fine for short distances.

Arduino wise I've built my own focuser controller for my telescope. It 
has a built in USB serial port which makes it easy to use on modern 
laptops without serial ports.

73,

     Sander W1SOP

On 4/1/2012 10:16 PM, Jason Rausch wrote:
>> 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.
>
>