IDEA: Porting VeloAce to the PC

[Uncle John]

VeloAce is an open source bicycle computer for the Palm PDA.
I had a go at porting Veloace (http://veloace.sourceforge.net/) to the XP environment so that I could use it on a PC when training indoors on my stationary bike.
I downloaded Visual C++ Express and tried compiling the code but immediately encountered difficulties.
I'll continue grappling with this project when I get the time but in the meantime I thought there might be others more competent than myself that may be interested in giving this a go.
I figure this project would be of particular interest to people that are interested in projects which interact with the physical world.

Chao,

Uncle John 

[hwtan]

Porting of Palm App to Windows is non-trivial. I would suggest a complete rewrite of the program in .NET or MFC, which could be potentially faster.
Attached is  a simple .NET 2.0 tester program for the hardware interface which calculates the RPM.
Please let me know if it works with the Vaif hardware.

[Uncle John]

Hi ethan,

Thanks so much for you advice. I suspected that a rewrite of the program would be required. I think I'll have a go at doing it in MFC.

I've found a short video that will at least get me started at http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=5681587

I really appreciate your tester program. Testing the RS232 connection is really be the best place to start. However I'm travelling O/S on holidays with my wife for the next six weeks and won't be in a position to do this test till I get home again. I'm typing this message from a hotel computer in Toronto at the moment. Although it would not be too difficult to rig up reed switch I suspect the hotel staff would not appreciate it. Given prevailing attitutudes nowadays I might even be at risk of being detained for suspicious behaviour.

However if someone else would like to try the tester program, VAIF details can be found at: http://veloace.sourc...ge.net/vaif/vaif.pdf. There is also useful information to be gleaned at: http://home.swipnet....358/pilot/cables.htm

 

[nite_monkey]

what abut windows ce? it is a palm os emulator, just run the program from that.

[Uncle John]

The idea is to watch a video/TV/Internet etc while running VeloAce with a small speedometer window (no border, transparent background, always on top) in the corner.

Looks like I can run VeloAce in a VMWare Player Window (http://www.access-co...com/cgi/garnetvm.cgi). But the Internet Cafe PC I'm using here in Paris won't let me download the software so I can find out whether I can use AutoHotKey to will enable me to achieve the remainder of the abovementioned objectives.

Maybe someone else can try this and let us know whether it works.

[Uncle John]

Anyone tried VeloAce in VMWare Player yet?