Pulse Shaping on the Palm Pilot
In this article we look at low level programming of the Palm Pilot, especially its Motorola MC68EZ328 DragonBall processor, also known as DragonBall-EZ. The aim is to use the DragonBall processor to create or simulate serial transmission functionality through the infrared and serial ports. More specifically, we look at how one may implement a Palm Pilot based remote control for consumer equipments such as a TV. We also look at how to communicate with a PC or device through a serial line by directly manipulating pins to create a pulse train.
We do not propose to cover detailed serial/infrared programming details of the DragonBall EZ chip. Interested readers may use the references section to get to Motorola documentation on the processor.
The UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter) is key to serial and infrared operations. Programming the UART built into the DragonBall processor is not a difficult task. Motorola technical support is also very cooperative when it comes to answering questions related to this processor....
