Universal Hub?

[starky]

When a friend introduced me to the concept of Redfly last night I visualised it like a sort of Universal Hub. Something that allowed usb things to be connected to it which then serve the phone or pda. Of course its fundamentally for Keyboard/Mouse/Screen but do guys here have ideas on the connection scenarios for the Redfly that could maximise the usb connections etc; such as storage drives, printer and so on?.
M

 

[cplush#WP]

my redfly will recognize usb mice, my 1TB external HD, storage card readers, some digital camera's, thumb drives, and keyboards. i havent tried printers yet.

 

[starky]

cool.... be interesting to see ref printers... any other possible uses for these usbs?

 

[cplush#WP]

the printers would depend more on the phone i would think and less so on the redfly. If you can get the drivers and software to print on the phone u should be able to through the redfly.....or over bluetooth

 

[starky]

would be interesting to see if a printer usb cabled to redfly could be seen by phone. anyone tried?

 

[cplush#WP]

http://forums.wmexperts.com/showthread.php?t=173251

check out this thread for printing by USB

 

[starky]

to some extent im still trying to figure the redfly scenario out. we wont go and buy a batch of them unless we know really how they could work as a hub. we know that the devices we have here are restricted in what they can connect to but i dont see any real useful info on the redfly site that echoes how it could be used as a real neat hub device. redfly should have a diagram or something on their site regarding this. to just position it as screen and keyboard in my view doesnt echo some likely other great uses. agree?. same in terms of how its drivers are working and the potential to api extra to them via their app running on the mobile. one example is the number of times guys here want to connect to external monitors or even old analog tvs.

 

[starky]

is user ckj the guy working for celio?. does he post here much as he may have some answers?

 

[cplush#WP]

ckj will prob be around in a little and he does work for Celio, PM him and he'll answer all your questions and stuff...the redfly does have a VGA port on the back to connect to moniters/projectors etc

 

[starky]

thanks cplush
my mind is thinking 2 ways at the moment. one side says its pricing and capability dont give it a chance in the future versus netbooks BUT the other side of my head echoes there could be something special about this redfly device BUT its not yet clearly defined BUT im willing to explore more. lets see what comes from this useful forum ;-)

 

[cplush#WP]

yeah, im actually a college student and use mine to take notes in class and write papers...the battery life is the main thing for me, that and its alot easier to mantain than a second laptop. If i already have a phone that can do all that stuff, its a whole lot simpler to only have to sync 2 devices instead of 3 (i keep all my school docs on my phone in case of intranet failures.... and use Live Mesh to sync my phone & PC), that and i have a constant internet connection anywhere i am. there are plus's and minus's to it as with anything tho.

 

[starky]

good post cplush!. thanks

 

[Tiredone]

The following reference shows that pcl printers are supported in Windows Mobile via usb

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa929632.aspx

at least, thats how I read it.

 

[starky]

nice ;-)

 

[Aware]

Keyboard, mouse, usb drives work for me - but not my external HDD.

iPod Video and iPod Shuffle will charge, but are not recognised as drives.

I can also connect to projector, and I plan to test connecting to a pico projector when I get my sweaty paws on one - www.microvision.com

 

[BengtBeier]

I did have success with several USB drives and card readers and some keyboards. Haven't been able to get any keyboard/mouse combination (where both are connected to one usb) to work, though, it will always only recognize either the keyboard or the mouse but not both.
Seems to be a problem of Windows Mobile not being able to deal with usb hubs.

Concerning printers, I found that at the moment there is seemingly no way to connect printers at all. Seemingly, Windows Mobile just does not natively support printing at all and especially not over usb (some add-ons allow for bluetooth printing but I haven't been able to get any of them to connect via usb). The only potential way I see to realize printing would be by creating a usb-interface which acts as a flash storage on the phone's side and converts all files saved to it to printing commands...

 

[mknollman]

There are programs like JetCet and others that already allow printing from winmo, but they arent as univerally functional as I would like. I would say the key to this one would be, instead of using the RF as a passthru, connect to the RF via BT. Then try and get your phone to talk to the printer via a program. Then worry about getting this onto RF functionally. JetCet is awesome, but for network or shared use it has a limited number models it supports.

 

[BengtBeier]

Well, I've read a bit more about the prining stuff now... From my understanding of how the printing process works there are four obstacles to overcome for that to work. First of all, you need to understand that you are dealing with three different devices (phone, Redfly and printer) each of which would have a specific role in the printing process:
- The printer will print out whatever you throw at it, given you use the right commands to tell the printer what to do. From itself, the printer can print neither a word document, nor a picture nor anything else.
- The Redfly really doesn't do anything else but route those commands from the phone to the printer. Technically, the USB you find in the Redfly is not really the Redfly's USB but a USB of the phone.
- The phone really needs to do all the work. That would mean "translating" the file you want to print into the right commands for the printer and then sending those to the printer.

Secondly, there is a huge number of possible combinations of those three because there are lots of different phones and printers out there. There is no uniform standard for computer-printer comunication but more or less every printer manufacturer has it's own command language. This is exactly why you always need to install a printer driver on your computer so you can print. The problem here is that hardly any printer manufacturers produce drivers for Windows Mobile. Have a look for more info on those languages here: http://www.undocprint.org/formats/page_description_languages.
From my understanding, the two most important languages are PCL and Postscript, though. Your best bet would therefore be to program drivers for those languages yourself (and that's exactly what JetCet Print does for example). However you turn it, though, you will never be able to support every printer.

Third, unlike desktop computer operating systems, Windows Mobile doesn't have a spooler nor a device driver for printing via usb so even if you were able to compile a printer driver for Windows Mobile, the driver could not write printing commands to the usb. JetCet Print supposedly also takes over this part of the job.

Fourth, especially concerning the existing Windows Mobile printing solutions: they currently only support sending print commands via bluetooth or infrared, not via usb. So even if your phone has a usb and you have a working printing software, you will not necessarily be able to plug your printer into the usb and print.

So, to wrap things up, whether you can print with a phone-Redfly-printer combination does not depend on the Redfly but mainly on your phone and the software you use. The chance you will find any such combination that works is marginal. HOWEVER, that doesn't mean it can not work. In fact, as I already said, JetCet printing - and I believe a few other printing programs - already go a long way to solve most of the problems there are. The way to go forward would be to talk to those developers and ask them to add usb support to their programs. If they did that, I believe you would be able to print at least on a large number of printers.