About TBM2 So Far

Happy New Year! Tronbike 1.x is riding reliably and is almost normal. The meter is the most unreliable component, gently prodding me to work on the new solution I am calling TBM2.

So far, this consists of a small ARM board computer running Linux. Getting the included kernel (2.6.13) to properly support my personal myriad of USB devices has been the goal, and last night finally my USB-WIFI device, a Linksys WUSB 11, finally made contact. The GPS works over bluetooth, and I have cross-compiled the "gpsd" to make access to the data "standard". Storage devices/USB memory sticks thankfully work right out of the box.

I should confirm RS232 support, either using my Keyspan USB-serial dongle or the built in RS232, but that should be easy, right ;)

NOW the hard part begins. I need to either port/install PythonGTK to the new platform OR port the TBM1 guts into C and cross compile. The GTK on the iPAQ gave me graphics, so more than a C port, I would need to use perhaps the board's included "QTopia". Because I have WIFI, another idea is to just create an iPhone application for the display system, and bury the current board within
the bike. I also could run the TBM2 as a network host for TBM1 on the iPAQ, using "usbnet" or even WIFI.

Besides the USB options, the distro on the ARM9 is pretty sparse - the "Familiar" distribution for the old iPAQs is far superior for usability and features. "Familiar" linux has an entire packaging system even.
Porting/supporting Bluetooth on just the right ancient iPAQ still might be the path of least work to getting something useful on the bike.