HP Prime wireless kit

[Tim Wessman]

(09-17-2014 02:22 PM)dbbotkin Wrote:  That is correct. When I first got my Prime, I thought "gee, a picture on the screen would be nice" and searched for a way to add a jpg (TI nspire does that)

Well, you have to remember that it *didn't* do that for 4+ years after introduction...

[dbbotkin]

(09-17-2014 02:56 PM)Tim Wessman Wrote:  Well, you have to remember that it *didn't* do that for 4+ years after introduction...

4+ Years? Well, I didn't know that, but I'm not surprised. A picture may have been "worth a thousand words" at some time, but now, I wonder.

My comment related to USB and wireless (using the same HID interface, IDK) was that the HP Prime seems more than fast enough to do what it was designed to do: be a powerful calculator. Matlab is $2,150 for a full single-user license (ok, much cheaper if you are not using it for "business") and if the Prime only does 10% of that, it is a bargain. And it is battery-powered and portable.

Just because shoehorning a photo into a GROB and loading it on the Prime slows data transfer, doesn't negate the quality of the design. I also support the efforts of h/p users to push the limits of the Prime if for no other reason than to inform others of things "not to do."

[dbbotkin]

Some new information. The h/p support registration page that I just used shows two versions of the HP Prime: "HP Prime Graphing Calculator" and "HP Prime Graphing Wireless Calculator", the latter being the G8X92AA.

So they are being positioned as two products. Interesting, in that many purchasers of the former thought they were getting a wireless or at least a wired inter-connective device.

[Han]

Except the "new" calculator isn't wireless in the sense of how that word is used today. A wireless device means it has that capability built-in. That's not true with this calculator since you need an add-on. Their wording should be "wireless capable"

[dbbotkin]

Quick and dirty speed-check on HP Prime ver A 6031 software (same gear as my prior post)

Transfer from Prime to Emu of Spreadsheet containing several 50x50 matrixes of random decimal numbers
USB shows 64Byte block transfers, my 'sniffer' showed eyeball average 500us for each

Transfer from Emu to Prime of same Spreadsheet containing several 50x50 matrixes of random decimal numbers
USB shows 64Byte block transfers, my 'sniffer' showed eyeball average 300us for each

Of course there is some hand-shaking before the transmission and the Prime seems to chat with the PC periodically.

Not what I expected: the transfer rate is faster going to the Prime.

If my math is right, those are speeds in the 1 to 2 Mb/s range like USB 1 or 1.1
The HP Prime is listed as a 00h class ("unspecified") not 03h (HID)

It should be possible to extend this interface to allow communication with other devices as is done with the 410 unit.

I'm sure someone more informed than I will have more information.

[toml_12953]

(09-18-2014 11:14 PM)dbbotkin Wrote:  It should be possible to extend this interface to allow communication with other devices as is done with the 410 unit.

I'm sure someone more informed than I will have more information.

The creator of HP PrimeComm probably knows more than anyone outside of HP about it

http://servicios.ried.cl/primecomm/

[debrouxl]

Quote:The creator of HP PrimeComm probably knows more than anyone outside of HP about it

That might be. At least, the fact is that PrimeComm fails to transfer variables to (and from, IIRC, at least on hardware revision A calculators, due to the "send to calculator" option having disappeared) a real calculator running firmware revision 6030: http://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/thread-36-...l#pid12957 and other reports. At the time of this writing, the latest commit on PrimeComm predates firmware revision 6030.

PrimeComm is clearly more famous than libhpcalcs libhpcalcs (Github: hplp, derived from well-established software for TI graphing calculators originating 15 years ago) is, not least because PrimeComm has a pretty UI and higher-level features such as a program editor and an image converter, while libhpcalcs remains CLI only for now, which is user-unfriendly.
However, libhpcalcs keeps mostly being able to transfer variables both ways with real calculators running firmware 6030 ( http://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/thread-36-...l#pid12997 ), which is the core functionality of a connectivity kit (in HP parlance) / linking software (in TI parlance). libhpcalcs implements the main commands exercised by the CK, save for the "switch to firmware download mode".

Technically, PrimeComm could leverage, and contribute to, the libhpcalcs code base, as libhpcalcs is written with both portability (Windows, MacOS X, Linux, FreeBSD) and interoperability (everything interoperates with C) in mind
Writing a portable Qt-based GUI for libhpcalcs has been on the TODO list since the beginning, but I don't have much free time, and most of all, user and enthusiast interest in the Prime platform in general (not just in libhpcalcs itself) remains low, for a variety of reasons...

[dbbotkin]

This is very good to know. I've tried PrimeComm, but as I'm more interested in moving data than transfering graphics, it was not as useful as the CK for my purposes. I'll have a look at libhpcalcs.

thanks
D

p.s. I use Xcode, but don't really understand all the 'makefile' stuff going on in the background when compiling. Is it feasible to use the github source code in Xcode to create a small Mac OS app?

[eried]

(09-18-2014 11:14 PM)dbbotkin Wrote:  It should be possible to extend this interface to allow communication with other devices as is done with the 410 unit.

I'm sure someone more informed than I will have more information.

The communication with other devices is certainly possible, the problem is without commands to send and receive messages programmatically all things are quite restricted:
http://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/thread-654.html

[dbbotkin]

Nice job with the wireless connectivity! What is the code you used? It looks like Arduino on steroids. Is the listing shown in the link the current one?

Thanks,
D

[eried]

The code is like 3 lines below the first image , indeed is arduino but of course you can make a custom pcb with the bare ic

[debrouxl]

Quote:p.s. I use Xcode, but don't really understand all the 'makefile' stuff going on in the background when compiling.

Makefiles are generated through the GNU autotools (autoconf, automake, etc.), which aim at making it possible to detect platform differences before build time, and set configuration information for the build appropriately. There are other well-known build systems with the same aim, such as CMake.

Quote:Is it feasible to use the github source code in Xcode to create a small Mac OS app?

Definitely. Once libhpcalcs is built, all you have to do is reference the headers somehow, and link against the thin library that references the shared object.
For specifics and step-by-step procedures, the Internet is a better source of information about that than I am. In my previous job, more than 3 years ago, I used to work on a MacBook Pro, but I installed Linux after a single week because MacOS X's peculiarities for compiling the software I needed / I was used to were just too numerous and slowed me down too much

Every programming language worth using interoperates with C, so all languages available on MacOS X (C, C++, Objective-C, etc.) can use libhpcalcs' C API.

Needless to say, if you plan on publishing your small MacOS X app, you need to do so under a GPLv2-compatible license... but don't worry about that, a great many software licenses are compatible with the GPL

[Adriweb]

For your information, once hplp is built, as Lionel said, it's easy to get the test program to compile and run in Xcode (or AppCode, CLion, etc.)..

The fastest way would be to tell Xcode about the .dylib so that it can link it successfully : just copy/reference it in your project by dragging it in the file list (originally it's /usr/lib/libhpcalcs.0dylib).


Also don't forget to properly include the headers (you probably will have to change the relative paths depending on where you created the Xcode project)