IR Hotsync

[guym@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Guy Martin)]

Hello fellow Piloteers,

I was tinkering with a new way to do hotsync, which I came across after reading about this freeware app called IRSync (available at www.iscomplete.com), which
turns your Palm III IR port into a hotsync engine.  I saw that the author had tested it on a variety of Windows configurations, but didn't have a datapoint for us non-MS folks using PilotManager.  Well, reasoning that since IRSync was just a pilot app, and didn't require any host side stuff (except a hotsync manager), I figured I would try to get this to work on my Ultra.

I went out to Frys, and after enduring the abuse of that, came away with a Belkin Components SmartBeam IR receiver, which is just a little IR 'eye', with a standard serial port interface.  I plugged this little guy into the same serial port that once held the connection to my cradle, pointed the Palm III at it, and sure enough, it worked!  Well, sorta....it is dog slow (only 9600 Baud) at the moment because of two things:

1) The IRsync pilot app is doing raw IR stuff (not IrDA I believe), so it is
   limited to 19.2 kb

2) The SmartBeam device itself defaults to 9600 baud.  The configuration utility
   that comes with it only runs on Windows, and even if you can get access to
   a Windows machine (I tried my wife's laptop), the device has no memory to
   save its settings, so after you configure it on the Windows machine, it 
   resets back to 9600 on the Unix box.  I even tried to set the device's
   baud rate through SoftWindows (Win95 emulator for Solaris), and then use it,
   but had no luck.

So anyway, this email is just a datapoint for anyone who might be interested in
this sort of setup.  I find it to be quite nice if I'm not going to do any
sort of backup (that takes *forever* at 9600 baud), where I'm just synching cal
and some simple memo stuff.  I'm trying to get the SmartBeam manufacturer to tell me exactly what the config utility on windoze sends to the device to see if
I can set the baud rate manually, but so far no dice.  If some kind soul out there has already done this, and could tell me what you did, I'd be eternally grateful.

Also, for those folks on the list inside of Sun, I'll be writing up this experience (complete with pics) for the Skunkworks website at some point. 

http://skunks.eng

Happy piloting!

	-Guy Martin
	-Sun Skunkworks

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