HP-IL Bluetooth PIL-Box

[Trancheterriere]

Hi All,

I would like to share with you a simple trial done around the PIL-Box. Using one (already programmed) device from J-F Garnier and two Arduino boards (One with Bluetooth and one for the Lithium Ion Polymer Battery power booster), I had a successful communication with Ilper. The average battery life time should be around 50 hours of BT connected communication. I have attached a picture to show the setup.

Patrick

Picture:     <-

[jch]

Nice setup Patrick.

I'm curious about throughput ?

I looked some time ago to use Bluetooth for HP-IL and was quite worried about latency.
Even with an optimistic 10 ms average latency, the throughput will drop down to about 50 single low bytes getting arroud the loop per second.

Do you have some benchmarks ?

Regards.
Jean-Christophe.

[Trancheterriere]

Hi Jean-Christophe,

You are totally right at 9600bps the same file transfer requires 1:21 with a standard pil-box and 3:23 with the bluetooth version.

Patrick

[HP-Collection]

Wow, not bad.
New challenge: build two identical arduino boards that replace the HP-IL loop by using either Bluetooth or WLAN. They both have HP-IL plugins and only the communication / file transfer is wireless. Should be a easy hardware work (Arduino nano + battery pack + Bluetooth/WLAN bridge), but the software ?
Idea: replacing long wires and more mobility.

[jch]

(06-28-2015 04:19 PM)Trancheterriere Wrote:  You are totally right at 9600bps the same file transfer requires 1:21 with a standard pil-box and 3:23 with the bluetooth version.

Great !
Barely one third throughput, I would have bet for one tenth, at least !

(06-28-2015 07:09 PM)HP-Collection Wrote:  Should be a easy hardware work (Arduino nano + battery pack + Bluetooth/WLAN bridge), but the software ?

Patrick, as far as I understand your Aduino boards are only for Bluetooth module and power booster ? Processor and software coming from J-F Garnier ? Or did you need supplemental processing ?
I don't know if PIL-Box can be reversed to take care of the other end...

Regards.
Jean-Christophe.

[Trancheterriere]

Yes, Jean-Christophe, the Arduino boards are only for Bluetooth module and power booster. The processor and it's software are coming directly from J-F Garnier, so there is no software development on my side.

I'm also working on a more complex board where porting Ilper will be required (see attached).

Patrick

Picture:    

[Dave Frederickson]

Hi Patrick,

From the photo it looks like your PIL-Box is v1.4. Updating to v1.5 may increase performance.

Dave

[jch]

(06-28-2015 09:22 PM)Trancheterriere Wrote:  I'm also working on a more complex board where porting Ilper will be required (see attached).

Patrick, you may be interested by This thread ?

And much more than storage and display, wireless hp-il may be useful for I/O or data acquisition in mobile systems.

Regards.
Jean-Christophe.

[Trancheterriere]

Indeed, Tobie's implementation is great help. By the way, I have already done a direct implementation of it... Of course using a compact implementation of the PIL-Box. In this system, the PIL-Box, the microSD and the power management are located on the board below the display:
   

My intend with the Bluetooth PIL-Box was to be able to connect to a smart phone without any cables. Unfortunately, I'm not a software guy. So I hope that someone, one day, will port Ilper on those platforms.

Patrick

[jch]

(06-30-2015 09:57 PM)Trancheterriere Wrote:  My intend with the Bluetooth PIL-Box was to be able to connect to a smart phone without any cables.

Hello Patrick,
Do you mean porting Ilper on a smartphone or being able to connect to an 'Bluetooth HP-IL device' from your smartphone ?

If you are looking after the second option, I'm on the way to add HP-IL serial connectivity to Free42S.
Yet only on Windows platform.

Regards.
Jean-Christophe.

[charger73]

Hi Patrick

Very nice to see other Arduino/IL projects!!

To use a smartphone (or tablet!) as an external IL display and mass storage over bluetooth
is a very nice idea!

Do you have more infos and pictures about your "compact" pil-box? Have you build it
on a Arduino experimential board?

By the way, i have build a much more compact software version of the IL drive emulation on Arduinio.

Best regards
Tobie

[Trancheterriere]

Hi Jean-Christophe,

I was meaning porting Ilper on a smartphone to benefit from the large screen and the storage capabilities.

Patrick

[Trancheterriere]

Hi Tobie,

Yes, I have used an Arduino experimental board to solder the PIL-Box devices directly on it. I have also used a microSD card module and a power management module. Finally on the right side of it (in the previous pict), I placed a Li Battery.

Concerning, the compact software version of the IL drive emulation on Arduinio, is this something different compare to what you publish in the thread that Jean-Christophe mentioned?

Thanks,
Patrick

[charger73]

Hi Patrick

The new version supports:

- 16MB LIF's
- HP71 IL bug workaround
- no more library, only one sketch file
- 6 fixed drives to fixed LIF files, no more software on the client side is needed
- you can copy files between the drives "COPY :2 to :3"
etc.

This version is in test. I will post it here soon.

Best regards
Tobie

[Trancheterriere]

Hi Tobie,

Nice work! I will definitely wait for it.

Thanks,
Patrick

[charger73]

I think, the first step should be to port ilper to android (java...) with/over a
USB-OTG connection.

I have to think about it...