Half PDA/Half Desktop PC

[DanTheMan]

Thanks a lot for even more replies, I suspected it would be that USB. I'd be able to work it out once I had it anyway.

After allll that discussing and finally arriving at a perfect model, I'm now thinking that might be a tiny bit too small. 5" would be an ideal size hahaha

To be honest I'll probably find myself ordering the 3.5 one as the 7" (next one up) is much too big for a pda size so if anyone knows of any similar systems at around 5" then I'm open to further suggestions

Thanks,

Dan

[Adrenalynn]

Thanks! The "Rep" button is the check-mark with the X gray button on the upper-right side of any post.

Agreed with what was written here. I didn't see the interface spec'd, and I stared hard at the board everyone is mentioning - clearly the interface is that little white plastic connector. No idea the output, but it's going to be some kind of serial. Worst-case is TTL, and if it is, we'll point you to a TTL->RS232 convertor from SparkFun for <$15 or a TTL->USB for a little more. Best case is USB (did I even write that?!?), second best is RS->232.

As Fergs suggested, it will resemble a raw pointing device (unless they include drivers). In a near-perfect world, it will resemble a touch-pad. You'll get something like X,Y or X,Y, Accel or X,Y,Time, or X,Y,Accel, Time ("Time" is nice measured internally because it make it easy to distinguish virtual button-clicks without having to do your own code to consider how long a person kept their finger in nearly the same place)

Make no mistake - this is definitely still a hackers project. You've just moved the hacking off the screen and onto the PC where you seem more comfortable.

As far as case material, you can look at Shapelock plastic. It can be formed just by putting it in hot water, taking it out and shaping it before it cools below its melting point. It's a common prototype tools, and pretty inexpensive.
Plastics done commercially are INCREDIBLY expensive for molding/casting. I always budget between $750,000 and $5,000,000 for my plastics commercially. We spent $1.2M on plastics for a cell-phone/gps embedded tracking device recently. That included a slide-off battery with its plastics. It was a great price from a long-time supplier we had in China. Delivery times from drawing to final prototypes on it was about 9 months, twice as fast as normal...

So me personally? I'd saw out a smoked lexan front plate to fit a project box, then I'd slap the electronics in a project box of appropriate size. You can find a near infinite number of project box size/shapes online. Try to find the retail sellers that don't have an MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity). You should be able to cut-out a smoked acrylic or lexan front plate (bonus points for going colored or even mirrored color acrylic) using hand tools (although a jig saw/saber saw/scroll saw will help immensely, but a good hand coping saw for $10 will do it) in just a few minutes - plan on making several and picking the best. I could build the casing with a couple hours in the lab with just a saber saw and a project box order for ~$25.