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Tapwave Zodiac:
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Notes on the integration of the Zodiac₂ into the Microship Project
Last updated: Jul 29, 2005

© 2005 by Steven K. Roberts
Nomadic Research Labs

(jr.com)

Jul 29, 2005 Note: Sadly, Tapwave has closed its doors. I still think this is a wonderful device, and I predict that, like the late lamented Newton, it will live on for years with enthusiasts. This page will remain, partly as a testimonial to a very cool PDA, and partly to continue to provide a few tidbits of hopefully useful information to others who are using them.

It occurs to me that I should have a page like this for every hardware and software component in the Microship, capturing the learning curves and the countless little discoveries that inevitably fall out of an intensive system integration project. I will maintain this document in real-time, adding new information as it becomes available, with the intent of sharing our knowledge and resources with others.

There are two benign ulterior motives at work here: doing my part to help solidify and increase the market share of this exquisite little machine, and carving out a niche of expertise in the application space that we are creating to address this class of user interface problems... who knows, maybe there will be spin-offs someday.

An additional motive is to help keep this project afloat by generating the occasional clickthrough on product affiliate links, like the photo above that opens a new window where you can buy a Zodiac from J&R, but nothing here is gratuitous... if I link to a product, it means I either recommend it from experience, have heard lots of good things about it, or am about to buy one myself. If something turns out to be not so hot after all, I will immediately remove the link and update the corresponding text. In all cases, affiliate links are indicated parenthetically; if a link is not followed by a company name in parens, it's just a normal link to another site (all of which open in a new window).

The Zode arrived here directly from Tapwave on Feb 1, 2005, and the first steps are basic familiarization, gathering software, and putting together the list of related essentials...

The Zodiac₂, showing the application launcher that can be driven by either the stylus or the 8-way analog controller on the left. There's a great product review at Brighthand and a very active user community at Tapland.

Feb 6, 2005 - Some Essential Accessories

The first essential component is synchronization with my primary machine (Macintosh iBook), and the pre-eminent tool for this is The Missing Sync from Mark/Space... it was installed last night and is working beautifully.

The Zode came with a nifty 2-part USB cable/charger assembly that is the default syncing/downloading pipe, but with the built-in Bluetooth it is just way too tempting to hang a radio dongle on the Mac... it's slower, but less fiddly than cables. The one that looks most interesting at the moment is the Zoom 4310 USB Bluetooth Adapter with a claimed range of 100 meters.

Speaking of things that happen at 2.4 GHz, another must-have is the SDIO card that allows Wi-Fi network access. There are two models that are known to work: SanDisk SDWSDB-000-A10M Wi-Fi SDIO Card (see image link below) and the more expensive PalmOne P10952U 802.11 Wi-Fi SDIO Card (amazon.com); the other SanDisk model with the 256 MB of memory is not currently supported (Note added Feb 25, 2005: It now is supported, thanks to the 2.1 Wi-Fi driver that also speeds up operation!). Once one of these is installed, the Zode can get to the net via 802.11 hot spots or an Airport base station; this is of particular interest to me in this project as the whole idea is to have the handheld user interface "discover" substrate interfaces, each of which looks like a web server (more on this architecture below).

Also on the current hot list is an external keyboard, presumably QWERTY although I am intrigued by the Frogpad. Apparently, however, there are issues involving Bluetooth keyboards in the current Palm OS, making it impossible to have that connection active while also using Bluetooth to connect to anything else (like the Internet via a cellular phone). They also draw more power than the more familiar IR keyboards, so I'm currently looking at two options in the latter category: the PalmOne 3169WW Universal Wireless Keyboard (amazon.com) and the Think Outside Stowaway IR Wireless Keyboard for Pocket PC and Palm OS (amazon.com). I've played a bit with the latter... it is very well-made and svelte, but would require a bit of mechanical hackage to support the Zodiac solidly; it also has no row of number keys but uses a modifier key to accomplish this. The former seems to support the unit better and has the familiar number keys, but I haven't actually seen one. I'll report on this also when hardware is in hand.

With two SD slots and cards available up to 2GB, it's a given that I'll want to add more external memory. I have not yet researched this enough to offer useful recommendations... though a good cost/performance ratio appears to be the PNY 1GB SD Card (jr.com). There is an excellent list of measured SD Card Benchmarks that will help with this process.

Before we go any further, here are some photo links for the items mentioned above:

Naturally, the past few days have seen some rather exuberant discoveries around here... from unearthing remarkable bits of software for the Palm platform (which I haven't used since the venerable Palm III era) to the pure delight of a 200 MHz processor and sharp, bright display in such a tiny and rugged device.

One of the things I'm most looking forward to installing is MathU Pro from my friend Clay Thompson here on Camano Island... as a die-hard Hewlett-Packard calculator (RPN) aficionado ever since the venerable HP-35 that I bought for $400 in 1972, this will be an absolute delight.

Stay tuned for developments as the Zodiac-integration project gets underway! I will also report in more general terms on the Microship blog as well on the live page for ephemeral daily updates. In the meantime, I refer you to two blog postings for context: VNOS in Blue Jeans, introducing the server-side tool that will be discovered by Zodiacs, and Canoe and Kayak Interfacing, which briefly addresses the new architecture in which a wandering user interface device interacts with "substrate interfaces" on each boatlet (or other environment). One of the first issues will be the transparent switching between a browser in the Zodiac with a viewer for Microship-generated streaming media and other non-static content such as console instruments (the kind of stuff that one might insert in Java sandboxes or handle with helper apps in a desktop browser environment).

Feb 9, 2005 - eBooks on the Zodiac

Moving into this little gem is a pleasant experience... I'm enjoying this more than any new computer I've had in quite a long time. I blogged it yesterday, with emphasis on the twin approaches we're going to take on the Microship development process, but there's more to it than that: it's also integrating more of the random components of my life into a single small space. Last night, for example, I crawled into bed and read a few chapters of Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe using the excellent and free GPL'd Weasel reader, quietly advancing pages with the analog controller and the direction buttons (depending on which hand was more convenient at the time). This reader works with standard PalmDoc files but uses the more compressed zTXT as its primary format, and there's a free tool called makeztxt to generate those from ASCII files... something I'll probably do with my Computing Across America book. It's also the only reader that has the ability to beam not only a book but a copy of itself to another Palm device, a much more effective viral marketing method than instructing the evangelee to go download and install some piece of software!

(Later note 2/16/05: After more experience, I find myself using the included Palm Reader instead... Weasel, at least the version I have, seems to drop into unreadable tiny fonts on smooth scroll, is less easy to navigate, and exhibits artifacts after navigation commands.)

Here's a good summary (and another) of Palm ebook readers, and the HANDebooks folks have a lot of useful info on conversion. There is also an excellent table of utilities that I'm still working through to find the best set of tools for moving some of my own content into this format. The Project Gutenberg site gives this advice on converting their massive collection for use on the Palm OS, and there are guidelines on using the Palm Markup Language and the free DropBook utility here. There is a huge collection of free reading material at Memoware, another at Manybooks, and countless more (much overlapping) that can be found with a bit of Googlage.

The decision to read that book, by the way, occurred about 5 minutes before bed. I went and snagged the file off Cory's site, dragged it to the Install window of Missing Sync, plugged in the cable (no Bluetooth dongle yet), pushed one button, then shut down the Mac and toddled off to bed with my new book in hand... reducing screen brightness to suit the dark room. I was mildly aware of burning battery to read, but this morning I noted only the barest change in charge percentage; when not running whizzy graphics like games and video, the Zode is remarkably frugal with power. (Later note: finished Eastern Standard Tribe... excellent!)

I've also been experimenting with various Palm apps from various collections Out There, finding considerable differences in style and behavior (including how gracefully they can be removed without leaving database debris in memory). Once I have enough data to filter out my own learning-curve artifacts, I'll comment on a few of them here.

At this point, I'm mostly learning online, integrating "Zulu" into my life, and awaiting the arrival of my Bluetooth dongle, SDIO Wi-Fi card, and 1-gig SD card. Jeannie is also awaiting her own Zodiac, to be named "Zephyr."

February 12, 2005 - Bluetooth Internet Connection Sharing

The Zoom 4310 USB Bluetooth Adapter arrived Thursday, and I was quickly able to sync and move files between the Zodiac and the iBook. Syncing is notably slower, but when you factor in the overhead of messing with cables and the convenience of doing it from the couch (assuming the Missing Sync software on the Mac is set to sync and not do Internet sharing), then it's a wash. Pretty cool, besides.

Even though I'm awaiting a WiFi SDIO card, I couldn't resist the allure of sharing the Mac's Internet connection via Bluetooth. But no matter how many times I ran through the setup, it simply refused to work. I even started collecting hints from the Net (1, 2, 3, 4) on making the necessary system-level tweaks via AppleScript or console incantations, but felt that it should work with the existing tools.

Naturally, it turned out to be pilot error, though an obscure one. Ned Konz was here yesterday to help with the back-to-back router configuration that will connect house and lab, and we noticed that the Zode was showing some very strange DNS addresses in its network prefs. As these are automatically assigned by the Mac during network connection setup, we looked over there, and sure enough... the top two of three were the mysterious leftovers of some apparent experiment somewhere, and the third was actually our local ISP. Unfortunately, the PalmOS tool only stores the top two, so DNS was always timing out. A quick fix, and we were Googling happily via an untethered Zodiac!

I did a quick range test, and found that it works anywhere in the house, and out to about 100 feet in the yard (with no deliberate attempt to optimize antenna placement). Note that there is a palm-optimized Google search page also.

Oh, and MathU Pro is now installed and working beautifully... all the joy of an H-P Calculator, but with a lot more features (solver, program editor with debugging and breakpoints, easy communications, and the Palm UI).

Feb 14, 2005 - Connected!

The pieces are all in place! The SanDisk Wi-Fi SDIO cards arrived today, as well as a pair of 1-gigabyte SD cards and Jeannie's Zodiac. We thus spent much of Valentine's Day happily interfacing, sending data between Zephyr and Zulu, hitting the Net via the Airport base station, syncing with laptops, and installing files various with many an exclamation of delight. It's really quite a remarkable package.

I have started work on the "substrate interface server," unimaginatively dubbed "SIS" at first, but now carrying the fanciful moniker Catherwood (a reference to the butler in Firesign Theatre's ancient Nick Danger classic). The front door is static HTML with a table of 8 photos; behind each is a corresponding set of tools: the Microships Wordplay and Art Throb, the yet-mythical mothership, the initial lab and house development environments, tools, toys, and documentation. The framework is pure "website," but large segments will be owned by VNOS... the interface layer that actually integrates all the I/O into an event-driven community of objects. Now that all the hardware is here, we're ready to play. More soon.

Feb 18, 2005 - Integration into a Complex Life

In addition to the project, the Zodiac is quickly becoming a convergence tool... reducing the number of separate objects I need to carry around while generally improving the efficiency of my life. I have attempted this with PDAs in the past without much success, and as much as I trust and adore my iBook, it's simply too large and IMPORTANT to subject to all the rigors of being constantly at my side. I took it on a 5-day kayak trip (GIF map image) a year or so ago, needing it for fireside packet radio and writing, and even though it was well-packaged in multiple waterproof layers I was acutely aware of the potential loss of my inadequately backed-up life archives if something catastrophic were to happen. As it was, the cold night by the campfire on Strawberry Island reduced battery life to about 30 minutes, and I had to run the laptop, moist with condensation, off the inverter in Bubba's power/tracker system.

But with the Zode, I find the depth of resources to at last be sufficiently satisfying that it goes beyond PDA/organizer and becomes a life tool, as essential as Leatherman and wallet. I have about a dozen eBooks in a tiny corner of the 1-Gigabyte SD card now, including medical and field survival reference material as well as plain old good reading. The built-in MP3 player allows audio books as well, so I'm about to give those a try... and were I so inclined, I could rip a whole DVD movie into some arcane format, stuff it onto a card, and watch it while otherwise confined to a seat. The combination of the teensy Wi-Fi card and my Airport Base Station means I can go online in bed or wherever; I've already used this for quick Googlage and the curiously pathological checking of eBay auctions (not to mention surfing when trapped in the reading room with nothing but yesteryear's Cruising World and Mac Addict). All the sync'd organizer functions are a given, of course... as are the entertaining diversions for those times when the brain isn't feeling particularly productive, yet still finds solace in the manipulation of flying or rolling virtual objects around a colorful bitmap. And, as a writer, it remains only for me to choose one of the folding keyboards to solve the "curl up anywhere and be productive" problem.

The difference between this and its predecessors must be related to a fast enough CPU to allow interesting apps, coupled with enough fixed and removable memory to allow installation of useful things without simultaneously having to decide what to nuke. There's also an ineffable feeling of quality that makes me enjoy interacting with the Zodiac... and that matters.

All this will be elevated to High Geek Theater with our new "universe interface" application. For me, this has been the Holy Grail for over a decade: a rugged and boatable little wireless front-end graphic console for everything in my life. Imagine the home control suite of tools Writ Large, with the ability to recognize and interact with multiple boats and fixed facilities, graphically present historical data, launch autonomous security or nav processes in embedded systems, act as a live control and instrument panel for any networked substrate, serve up documentation, and offer the usual suite of communication and productivity tools... all without getting in the way or becoming an end unto itself as do so many interesting geek toys. And, since it's off-the-shelf hardware, it's not the end of the world if it slips out of my hand and bubbles its way forever into the murky depths. Just curse fluently, then get another one and re-install the code from network-resident backups.

So that's what I'm working on, driven by an exotic vision of nautical substrates whilst cobbling together an initial test suite here in the lab.

Feb 23, 2005 - EBook Publishing, Screen Protectors, and More

Lots of Zode-centric activity here, and Zulu even went on her first kayak trip... about 5 miles to Baby Island and back (a photo is in the new Zodiacs Around the World collection).

It became evident after handing the machine around here and there (yielding a few fingerprints and a light scratch) that I really should use a screen protector. Grumbling about this, but convinced, I went through the somewhat nightmarish process of installing a Brando unit. It's deceptively easy at first, after removing the protective layer on the adhesive side, but the then the truth dawns: it's a running battle against bits of dust attracted by the static electricity generated when plastic moves against plastic. I even did the trick of working in the bathroom after a shower, but still...

So the two tricks I learned are these: First, instead of using some kind of pick to dig at a corner every time you need to try again, use clear 3M packing tape. Second, use the same flavor of tape to lightly wipe the adhesive side... it will capture the pesky intruders that create immovable air bubbles. Repeat this process until you have reached a level of cleanliness you can live with, understanding that all the handling leads to a gradual degradation independent of the individual dust motes. If things get completely out of hand, wash lightly in warm soapy water, dry with a hair dryer, and try again. The net effect is somewhat less than the perfect sharpness of the original Zodiac screen, but it is immensely liberating to know you can be a little less paranoid about stylus pokes and finger oils, now that you're working with a disposable surface.

Speaking of which, I discovered that the Brando-style leather case, used without the original flip-over screen cover, is fine UNLESS you subject the unit to significant pressure. That apparently happened in my pack the other day, creating a light gridded impression on the screen that took hours to recover. It was what prompted me to install the screen protector that had been sitting on my desk all week...

In geekier news, I have been trying without success to sync via Wi-Fi (with Missing Sync on the iBook). No luck yet, either with the !! as machine name (suggested on the Tapland forums) or with the raw IP address (suggested in the Mark/Space forums). If anyone knows the trick, please tell me.

Finally, I've been enjoying eBooks so much that I'm on the verge of producing my own... and the first step was to get familiar with the tools. Today I learned to use PML (Palm Markup Language) and the DropBook utility from Palm Digital Media. It's all a bit terse, but works great... and my first test file was the tale of that rollicking adventure with Faun, a decade ago, aboard a pair of Fulmar-19 trimarans (which were intended, at the time, to become the Microships). You can download it here (51K .pdb file) and it's also available on the Memoware site in the adventure category.

NOTE ADDED TO THIS TOPIC Feb 25, 2005: I have since realized that the PalmReader app, though excellent and bundled with the Zodiac, is not free... nor is the source open. For publishing projects, I will instead use Plucker... a test this morning with their Mac OSX suite worked beautifully, converting 37 chapters of the Miles with Maggie series into a .pdb file that was a pleasure to read on the Zode. This is much easier... working with HTML is more natural than PML anyway, with lots of familiar tools, and I have come to prefer the Plucker reader (using it at the moment to read 1984 for the first time since high school).

Mar 4, 2005 - Alternative Text Entry Systems

A long time ago, Xerox sued Palm over the use of Graffiti, a wonderful system of characters that allowed brisk handwriting recognition. I believe the lawsuit eventually was dismissed, but the damage was done: Palm stopped shipping the original character set and replaced it with Graffiti 2, which required two actions for letters like k, x, i, and t. Nobody seems to like it, and it's much more error-prone than the original.

This gave rise to a mini-industry in alternative text-entry methods. This week's hot news in the Zodiac community is that Fitaly is now available, though it depends upon use of a special version that in turn requires SkinTW to allow re-mapping of the DIA (Dynamic Input Area). The Fitaly on-screen keyboard has some strong adherents, but i have not yet tried it; a good article on the subject with additional links is on the Tapland site. There's also an excellent story with a number of helpful Fitaly tips over at Writing On Your Palm.

I've been using MessageEaseKB, which takes over additional screen real estate since it has not been licensed to run in the DIA. My speed has not yet asymptoted, but as a long-time user of alternative text entry (chord keyboards built into the Winnebiko II and BEHEMOTH handlebars), I'm intrigued. The basic interface is a 3x3 grid, and characters are either taps on the 9 buttons or strokes between them, with a few modalities that extend it to way more than the full ASCII character set (including Macros). Once you get good, you can shrink it to a version without legends for higher speed. If this becomes second nature, I might try to implement it on a laptop-style touch pad for use on the Microship.

For those who just pine for good old pre-lawsuit Graffiti, the answer is certainly TealScript. This can be extensively customized to your handwriting style, and comes well-recommended (although I have not tried it myself).

Of course, there are also keyboards. Jeannie is currently using the Think Outside Stowaway IR Wireless Keyboard to work during her bus commute, and is happy with it. The IR units are probably the best choice at this point, as the much more flexible Bluetooth models that don't require optical alignment are apparently non-interoperable with Wi-Fi use... so if being able to type while online is important, you're out of luck. If simultaneous Wi-Fi use were not an issue, I would be very tempted to try the Bluetooth iFrog from Frogpad... I might anyway, as most of my text entry is offline writing and most of my online activity consists of pointing to and fro with occasional bouts of form-filling, easily handled by pen-entry.

Mar 12, 2005

I finally found the fanny pack (or bum bag, for you Brits and Aussies... or to use the politically correct new terms, lumbar pack or even waistpack) that is perfect for the Zodiac! I've had the discontinued Radio Shack PDA belt case for a while and it's sort of OK, but takes a lot of stress when I sit down; the Tapwave leather case is great but doesn't include a way to hang on the body. Besides, I want to carry, at minimum:

Zode
Wallet, keys, pen, etc
Handheld dual-band ham radio rig
LED headlamp
Digital camera
Water bottle
Leatherman WAVE multi-tool

My natural tendency is to get packs that are too large, which then induces me to fill them up, thus rendering them so heavy that I stop carrying them.

But today at REI, I picked up a Mountainsmith Kinetic II, and I am already in love with it. The front pocket has a waterproof zipper and fleece lining, and seems to have been made for the Zodiac in its leather case. There's a protected headphone cable exit that can be accessed by either the outer pocket or the main body of the pack, and there are dual side mesh pockets for walkie-talkies and water bottles. The waistband is comfortably wide, and the whole thing is soft, firm, and free of all the dangly complicated bits that make most lumbar packs kind of irritating. The word "sleek" comes to mind. These are $39.95 at REI... click the picture to go to their catalog page and buy one:

If you want to see mine in use, I have three photos on this server (I don't want to add many more inline to this page; it's starting to get slow to load):

This is going to get a lot of mileage... and should interoperate well with the technomadic backpack that I'm now building!

Jul 1, 2005

Sorry for the lack of updates lately! I've been working full-time on the Shacktopus project, which includes a Bluetooth interface with the intent of using the Zode as a wireless control panel for the radios and other gear. Stay tuned...

Ongoing - A Collection of Oddities, Glitches, and Bugs

This is a place to document various problems or incompatibilities that I've observed with applications that I have installed in the Zodiac. Nothing here should be taken as a product review; it's just a glitch collection, and I include work-arounds and other commentary where applicable. Version numbers are noted in case these issues are transient, and if a given issue turns out to be pilot error or otherwise irrelevant, it will be deleted to avoid confusion. Your Mileage May Vary, and all that...

Product	Behavior
QuickNews RSS Reader v1.02	Hangs on some updates, taking a minute or so to recover from Cancel command. This puts the SanDisk Wi-Fi card into a mode that fails to acquire IP address (even in other apps) until power-cycled. Repeatable behavior, rendering the app useless in its current incarnation. Also causes crash when fiddling with prefs, and Missing Sync does not recognize provided conduit. Deleted until new version available.
SanDisk WiFi Card	Inserting into SDIO slot while Zodiac is off causes wake-up and lockup, requiring soft reset. Always fine if inserted with power on.
Weasel v1.59.3	Seems mismatched to Zode or OS version; screen artifacts after navigation commands, unreadable font on smooth scroll, other UI glitches.
OmniRemote	Kept crashing. I did not chase problem, as I'm not a TV-watcher and don't really need it... but it's cool anway. Deleted.
Web Browser	Not a bug, really, but worth noting: the preferences option to "offer old content if available" is not the same as "use cache" in the familiar sense. If I go look at my eBay About Me page with this option checked, I get a previous version with fewer feedbacks and items for sale. Normal browser caching would simply load images from disk, but get fresh content from the server.
Think Outside IR keyboard & MessagEaseKB	Not sure which is misbehaving, but I just found an odd interaction. MessagEaseKB is wonderful and I've been using it all day... then I attached the Think Outside IR Wireless keyboard, which also worked fine. But after that, backspace no longer worked from MessageEase, and 2 files in MemoPad had been mysteriously merged. More when I figure out what happened.
Web Browser vs. Gmail	Looks like we can't use Google's Gmail from the Zode... it thinks the Web Browser is IE, and wants me to enable ActiveX controls. Yahoo mail works OK, though. Mar 4, 2005 NOTE: Fixed! As reported in this thread, Gmail now supports HTML, and it has been tested with the Zodiac. But I changed to HTML mode via the Mac, then tried it this evening: "connection errors."
MessagEaseKB vs InkStorm	Not mutually compatible, though it's not particularly important here. The delightful MessagEase is so far working with everything else except TuSSH (secure shell).
PocketSatPlus v1.9	Inhales Keplerians and computes satellite tracking data fine, but crashes on map display with color HR. Appears to be a graphics issue; horizontal bars and only partial saturation, some activity, then lockup. Awaiting response from developer; it's a pretty nifty program
Mark/Space MemoPad (?)	Haven't tracked this one yet or confirmed repeatability, but one text file written in Tex-Edit Plus, pasted into M/S MemoPad, then sync'd to Zode will not accept any text from the DIA or MEKB (although it is possible to delete characters). Later note Mar 12, 2005: this behavior has not been repeated in other files that followed the same path, so must have been a fluke.

Zodiacs and related products frequently show up on eBay... for your convenience, here's a list of what's currently on the auction block:

Tapwave Zodiac: Comments, Resources, and Hacks