Remote control of MOD5234 from a smart phone, iPad or iPod?

[barttech]

I have an product that controls small motors for lenses. It can take commands via serial, UDP or as a webserver. My customers would like to be able to control these units via a small, wireless COTS device, like a smart phone, iPad or iPod. I can replace the serial cable with a wireless solution, but then I think I need a netbook to run the terminal app. The netbook gets to be bigger than what they want for a hand held controller.
Many of my customers' customers won't allow a internet connection, local network only.
I see NB is working on a replacement for their wireless adapter, would this allow an iPod or iPad to connect to the MOD5234 webserver directly (ad-hoc?).
Can I get a direct Bluetooth connection to the MOD from a smart phone? I know I'd need to add a Bluetooth adapter of some sort.
I think a cellular connection would have too much latency, they want to run the motor to a focus point, then stop it, for example.

Are there simple wired solutions? It seems most tablets don't have an RJ45 jack, is there a hand-held, cheap (<$300), battery-powered web-enabled device that could be plugged into the ethernet cable?

I have resisted buying all the new i-gadgets, so I don't completely know what they can do.

I don't think I want to go with IR.

Thanks!
Sam

[tod]

It's sound like you can attach your product to the LAN so just put a wireless router on the LAN. Lose the serial port altogether. All communication will go through the web server. On the client side, I wouldn't bother with the iPhone or Android APIs, and then on the server side you don't have to support anything other than the web server. Just write an AJAX application in the NetBurner using the standard HTML/CSS/Javascript tools and optimize the pages for the target device page size. If the iPad is in the mix that probably means at least two sets of CSS tags. Don't assume it will work with any smart phone though. The iPad and Android tend to support very modern compliant browsers so it shouldn't be too bad. If you can specify one device and one browser DO IT. It takes longer than you would think to make things work among multiple browsers.

[barttech]

Thanks Tod,
The serial port is an optional interface.
The entire system can be controlled with a Flex interface on ethernet, so it looks like I just need a wireless bridge or a 'wireless game adapter'. I had hoped they made something like the USB adapters, except that plugged into the RJ-45 jack, but I haven't found such a thing. I guess I'll need to glom a box onto the side of the system and run a cable to it. I think we can ship it as a complete system, lens controller, wireless adapter and tablet computer, so we don't have to get into all the various configurations of i-whatevers that folks would want to use.
I'll try to remember to post my results, other ideas are welcome.
Sam

[v8dave]

Actually there is such a device.

Check out www.wiznet.co.kr as they have a Wireless to Ethernet and RS232 interface that might be just what you are looking for.


I have used their RS232 to Ethernet modules (over the internet) to debug and test an underwater remote tooling package with great success.

Dave...

[barttech]

Those look pretty promising Dave, thanks!
Now what I'm struggling with is the user end of things. I thought I could buy a $200 tablet and run my flex interface, but I see that most tablets and iPod Touches don't support Flash (and if I understand it correctly, Flex uses Flash). I have a simple html interface, but I don't like the way the buttons can't show a change in status w/o a refresh, so I moved to Flex, which I really liked. I'm hoping to have something ready for a tradeshow in April, so I don't want to wait until the portables can handle flash. Any ideas?
Sam

[seulater]

I to got hooked on flex, and i often wondered about the apple Flash war. I would imagine there must be something out there to do it or everyone with a mac could not view any of the flash sites.

[Ridgeglider]

The android phones and tablets support flash

[tod]

Buttons can show a change in status without a refresh, you just use an XMLHttpRequest. The most common idiom for this is of course AJAX. If you aren't familiar at all please see the wiki article. Also, while I have no experience with it there is a javascript library called jQTouch that might make developing an app for an smart phone or pad much easier. When I get a chance I'm going to explore JQuery and JQTouch and see if there isn't a Ajax III framework in the future.

[tod]

I to got hooked on flex, and i often wondered about the apple Flash war. I would imagine there must be something out there to do it or everyone with a mac could not view any of the flash sites.

It's more a skirmish than a war. Macs (and Mac OS/X in general) have no problem displaying flash sites. It is Apple's iOS that doesn't allow native flash apps. Also Apple did relent and now allows Flash-derived apps. That is, those tools that take flash apps and convert them to native apps are now allowed.