Quozl's Open Source Work

vpd - Granite Communications Videopad Base Station BS5 Daemon

Granite Communications sells some rather novel radio terminals with backlit LCD keypads that they call Videopads. No video involved, as such. Quozl obtained a couple of keypads (VP5) and a base station (BS5) unit as they were being dumped. They came with full documentation and a C language development environment that ran on MS-DOS.

Quozl then implemented some test programs along with a base station protocol driver on an OpenVMS/VAX machine. Recently Quozl ported the program to Linux as a user mode daemon. The program communicates with the BS5; it resets, initialises, and enables RF transmission and then awaits packets from Videopad units.

While not immediately suitable for use, it does demonstrate a working implementation of Linux communications with the BS5 and could be used as the basis of further work.

vpd.tar.gz source code for daemon and portions of host back-end code for test programs.

Videopad Test Programs

Although not being made available here, the test programs were:

vpt.c - accepts serial data from a Mantis Micro Products DIGITEMP multi-channel temperature sensor and delivers it to another VP5 via the BS5.
vpb.c - a remote control for Quozl's home control system, the Butler, which sends commands via RF to the BS5, then to the VAX, which forwarded them over serial connection to the Butler.
vpc.c - a commuting data logger, which gathered timing data from regular motor vehicle trips and downloaded it transparently to the VAX by RF on arrival home.
vpf.c - a simple hierarchial object filing system, retaining just a description, object number, and enclosing object number.
vps.c - an alternative implementation of the speedometer program.

Videopad Application Development on Linux

The application development environment for the Videopad product is called TOUCH-C, and is a C compiler and linker developed by Microtec Research. The tools provided function adequately on MS-DOS, and work fine under version 0.66.7 of dosemu, the Linux DOS emulator. The MCCM77 compiler causes a segmentation violation on 0.98.0 onwards of dosemu.

Quozl would like to hear from anybody developing applications on Videopads with Linux, so as to share experiences. Please send mail.

11th July 1999, quozl@us.netrek.org