Divecomputer-reading from Mobile devices (Was: Divemate Fusion)

[Linus Torvalds]

On Sat, Apr 9, 2016 at 9:23 AM, Robert Helling <helling at atdotde.de> wrote:
>
> But let’s give it a try. There are two sides to it: Talking from a phone to
> an arduino over BT and the Arduino talking to the dive computer (port
> libdivecomputer to Arduino?!?)

Arduino's are cool, but there are cheap alternatives that would be
*much* simpler just because they already run Linux and running
libdivecomputer on them should be trivial.

There's the obvious RBP (and variants). But most of them don't have
good connectivity.

And there's a $9 C.H.I.P.

In fact, CHIP seems to be almost optimal for this - not only does it
have bluetooth, it has the charging circuits built in. So you can
literally just hook up a 1S LiPo battery, and you're all done from a
portability standpoint.

Now, I happen to have two CHIP computers (just the basic $9 thing - no
case or actual LiPo battery or anything fancy), but no time to
actually play with them. If somebody thinks they would actually work
on this, I'll happily mail one out.

That said, I think you could/should prototype the communication
channel first - you could start out just using a pipe between two
processes, just to see what the communication between an "external"
libdivecomputer interface would be like. Then the "switch from using a
pipe to using a bluetooth serial connection" would be a much more
straightforward step.

So before I send out one of my CHIP things, maybe somebody could show
that they have the time and energy and ability by doing that pipe
implementation.

Because $9 is $9. And depending on where I ship it, the postage is
going to be more than that ;)

                 Linus