HP Prime too complicated

[DrD]

(07-16-2018 06:53 AM)cyrille de brébisson Wrote:  Hello,

Serial coms are "easy". Send bytes, receive bytes...

USB is complex!



Now, if one of you here is working for a company that makes/use such a device and have a real use for such USB functions (more than just: it would be cool to show that you can do it), then please do PM me and I can see if something could be arranged...

Cyrille

USB to serial converters exist, so if you could get an interface like that to work, you would be well along the way to success with the comm's.

I'm retired now, but I used the hp48 and hp 50 products to validate installation, calibration, and maintenance of quite a variety of data acquisition products used in the natural gas utility industry.

You're right, in that manufacturers have their own software, and licensed protocols as drivers for the core product. When I retired, most of the software was built around modbus, and some earlier products used a simple checksum on the end of an ascii command or return message. While not 'easy' necessarily, it wasn't too difficult to create a tool box with native modbus commands, or the ascii equivalents, to interrogate the various hardware.

I was quite the guy at our local distribution utility, because I could roam the system and respond to any field problem with this (hp calc) hand held terminal arrangement. It made the service for me, and the benefit to the utility, quite valuable. Laptop pc's are too big to handle, especially in inclement weather on a noisy pipeline, when the pressure is on to get telemetry, like at a strategically important, natural gas custody transfer station, in the middle of a dark night, back on line. I have had many such experiences over my career there.

In fact, I was just asked, recently, by a new manager in the engineering department, if I would be willing to come back as a contractor to fix some of the pre-existing equipment. I still have my hp50, the software I used when I retired, but I'm retired ... and it's a good thing!

So it's not about the system software provided by the manufacturer. That is something that should not be messed with in field service, the need is for a compact gadget that can be readily accessed, quickly, in confined spaces, in less than ideal environments. The prime would be sooo much better for this than the 48/50 calcs, if only ...

Much of the telemetry used radio based communication. Most of the radios used an hht for programming the radio: frequency, power, deviation, levels, etc. Yes, I used the hp calcs for that, too! I had the manufacturers terminal, but I liked my one tool hp calc approach even better.

-Dale-