RATIO iX3M DEEP computers compatibility and connection/configuration problem

[Jef Driesen]

On 2017-08-23 06:43, Dirk Hohndel wrote:
>> On Aug 22, 2017, at 7:55 AM, Jef Driesen <jef at libdivecomputer.org> 
>> wrote:
>> I don't understand what you gain with those comments. I mean it's just 
>> comments. Don't you need this kind of info at runtime instead?
> 
> Yup - I simply have a tool that parses the source to give me the
> information that I want.

Well, that's a pretty ugly and error-prone hack. You hard-code 
everything in the application, based on whatever version that was used 
at build time (which may not even be the same as at runtime). But the 
reason why that table exists, is to let applications populate the list 
of supported devices dynamically at runtime! And by doing it this way, 
you also depend on some of the libdivecomputer internals.

If we're adding this kind of annotations, then I prefer to make this 
information available through the api. That will be a lot more useful, 
and may also benefit other applications.

>> Something like what I proposed for the I/O refactoring:
>> 
>> For the I/O refactoring, I'm already planning to add an extra field 
>> with the transport type. Since some devices support multiple 
>> transports, the transport type will need to change into a bitfield. So 
>> something like this:
>> 
>> {"Shearwater", "Petrel 2",  DC_FAMILY_SHEARWATER_PETREL, 4,
>> DC_TRANSPORT_SERIAL | DC_TRANSPORT_BLUETOOTH | DC_TRANSPORT_BLE},
> 
> Which doesn't tell me if this is an FTDI chip - which is one of the
> things that I need to know.

That's quite easy: Suunto (solution, eon, vyper and d9), Oceanic (vtpro, 
veo250 and atom2), HW (frog, ostc and ostc3) and Cressi (leonardo) 
backends use an FTDI chip. You don't need to annotate each device for 
that. Just check the family type.

Note that the usb-serial chipset is often not integrated in the dive 
computer, but in the external PC interface. So there is not always a 
nice one-to-one relationship. For example the official Suunto PC 
interface uses an FTDI chip, but there are also third-party interfaces 
available using a Silicon Labs chip (and those are quite common). And 
some really old models still have a real serial port, and thus the user 
can use any usb-serial dongle.

Jef