Hello all

[Tim Roberts]

Brandon wrote:

> I just joined the jornada 820 mailling list and thought I'd drop a
> note to let you know what I want to accomplish with my jornada and if
> you have any pointers.
>
> I want to make a monitoring station that will log  wind
> speed/temperature/direction, and also ground temperature gradients..
> I need it to run uninterruped in the desert running on solar power for
> at lease 1 year with no interaction from an operator..
> I was planning on using a usb hub to connect multiple usb to serial
> adapters for data logging..
> Does usb support work on linux with the jornada 820??
> I can get the Jornada for free and I was thinking that this would be a
> good reliable linux machine as it has no moving parts...


I'm not sure I would choose the Jornada.  I don't think of it as being
well suited to harsh climates.  For example, I suspect it isn't
particularly amenable to the kinds of temperature extremes one finds in
a desert environment.  And, as far as I know, it can't be set to
automatically reboot after a power interruption, which is a highly
desireable feature in a remote data logger.

Does the Linux code have the ability to control the backlight?  You
wouldn't want to run the backlight for a year solid.

If it were me, I'd go for one of the little 4"x5" processor boards that
you see in Linux Journal every month.  There are a number of
manufacturers of such boards, designed specifically for tasks like
this.  They can boot from flash memory, so there are no moving parts,
and most of them have various kinds of serial data connectors right on
the board.

On the other hand, as one of the local furniture vendors says, "free is
a very good price".

-- 
Tim Roberts, timr@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.