WQV-1 and IrDA

[Or]

Hiya,

I don't usually post much (a bit of a busy lurker), but for the past week I've been occupied with a small project that you might find interesting. I am somewhat stumped and hoping that you might be able to offer some help or give advice on how to proceed.

A few days ago I've stumbled over a relic of modern technology - my old Casio WQV-1 wristwatch. Besides beeping and telling the time this little vanity gadget also had the nifty featuring of having a digital camera that could take grainy photos in 120x120 pixel and glorious 16 shades of grey.

Although now days this old camera pales in comparison to any cheap cellphone camera I thought it'd be fun (in a nerdy sort of a way) to get the little thing working again. And it does! For the most part. I can't get the photos out of the watch. The reason being that Casio used what seems to be a custom IrDA serial dongle to transfer the photos to the PC using a program that won't run on anything past Windows 98.

Thankfully, people have reverse engineered the protocol over the years and its specifications are available online ( http://www.mgroeber.de/misc/wqvprot.htm ).

It looks simple enough - the protocol is a simplified variation of IrLAP ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IrDA#IrLAP ) that I could implement give the appropriate hardware. People have done so with the IrDA port on various gadgets from Palm devices to the Nokia Communicator. Trouble is, I do not have any such IrDA hardware. And since I do not have a working IrDA dongle (at least, one that'll work on a Linux/Mac machine) I am considering building one by myself.

My plan for the moment involves building the following IrDA transceiver circuit - http://trandi.wordpress.com/2010/01/09/irda_mcp2120_tfdu4300_ftdi_ttl-232_capacitor_crystal_7-3728/ and attaching it to an Arduino that will receive the raw photo data from the watch and then transfer them to the PC will they will be converted into PNG format.

Is this plan sound? Am I missing anything? My skill in electronics is still somewhere at a breadboard tinkering level. The only difficulty I see with the current plan is in getting the components, and having to deal with the surface-mounted soldering of the IrDA transceiver element.

Or maybe I'm just going a little overboard and there's an IrDA dongle that I could get to work with a modern Mac/Linux machine?

Thanks ahead!

[elad orbach]

I think there should be some palms hand held pcs :) at tami

Ir dongle cost around 4$ maybe less maybe more - check eBay

Otherwise I'll be glad to help you a bit in your project

At Tami

972-cellcom-8401012

Sent from my iPhone

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[Yuval Adam]

Take a look at LIRC, which is the standard IR library for linux.

http://www.lirc.org/

They also have a list of supported hardware as well as some home-brew projects that might be of interest.

We have RTL-SDR dongles at the space that have a built-in IR sensor that is LIRC-compatible.

You can try hacking those to get the raw data stream and tweaking to your needs.

Otherwise try dx and aliexpress which most likely carry LIRC-compatible dongles, which should be cheap.

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[Udi Finkelstein]

I was about to suggest the USB IR toy, but then I  saw you already posted to the dangerous prototypes forum.

if you come to the conclusion that one can help you, I have a brand new USB IR toy at home.

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[Or Botton]

Elad, do you happen to know which OS the Palm devices are running? The Palm app needs PalmOS 3.3 or above. While this isn't a long term solution it sounds like a good way to the old existing photos out of the camera. I should drop by the space and check it out. 

Yuval, lirc looks like a good option, checking it out. Their list of IrDA SIR compatible devices is all old RS232 gear but I could probably get one from ebay and get it to work with a USB-to-Serial adapter. If this works out it'll save some soldering work!

Udi, yup, that was me in the forum. I initially thought the USB Ir Toy might work but further digging unearthed some posts that show the USB Toy won't work with IrDA - the receiver they're using is designed more for TV remotes. Still, things were a bit ambiguous so I posted the question in the forums, but so far no one seemed to know the answer.

Thank you all for responding, this is very helpful!