WP34S (SENDL) Is it Practical/Possibe

[matthiaspaul]

Perhaps somewhat related, I can think of a use case of the WP 34s being attached to a desktop or notebook computer via its USB / TTL serial link and used as a smart numerical keypad (similar to the HP CalcPads, but better) or kind of "remote control".

The idea would be to run the emulator on the PC to see and possibly log the data entry along with the results, and to make the data available to other applications via copy & paste, but to use the real calculator for the input (more convenient than using the PC keyboard, in particular without a numpad).
The calculator could be brought into this mode via a special startup hotkey like ON+R ("remote"). In this mode, it would echo any detected keystrokes in a rudimentary small packet format, so that f.e. the emulator could react on them in real time. Likewise, if the user would enter data into the virtual calculator (perhaps also using the mouse), the emulator would echo this to the calculator as emulated keystrokes as well. Typically, both calculator instances would display their local display contents, but there should be some means to send / receive the display contents of the opposite party as well, overriding the local display. At minimum, the calculator could blindly emit detected keystrokes and otherwise work as normal, unless it receives messages with emulated keystrokes or display contents from the other side, which than would temporarily override the local data.

I haven't looked at the sources yet, but wonder if implementing something like this would be possible without consuming too much flash memory given that an ON+D debug mode already exists. What do you think?

Greetings,

Matthias