We've been working at Eyebeam since July on making it easy to hack
old devices and run new software on them. We now have our first
Reware HOWTO video, showing the basics of how to use a Reware image
yourself, then it illustrates some of the Pd patches we've made:

http://dev.eyebeam.org/projects/reware/blog/48

Coming soon, a image for running Pd, Python, and Lua programs on
PDAs, as well as a HOWTO for making Pd patches for 1-5G iPods. The
key idea is to turn old PDAs, mobile phones, etc. into something like
an Arduino, where you can easily upload your own code to the device.

(here are direct links to the video, choose your favorite site):

http://blip.tv/file/1526116

.hc

That's beautiful Hans. It has inspired me to swipe a PDA today. More on this after the heist is complete.

Excellent, that is what I am hoping to do! With some work, we can make it easy to hack these little computers just like we do with the big ones. Except something about holding them in your hand, and interacting via a touchscreen just makes it a lot more engaging.

Let me know what kind of devices you can get, and I can help you find the one that is easiest to hack. We are trying to document things on our wiki, so that people can find out which devices can do what:

http://dev.eyebeam.org/projects/reware/wiki/Reware

Picked myself up a "palm zire 72s special edition". I'm rying the cocoboot loader, but I have a 320x320 screen. No boot success yet.... .... ..... loading... .....

ok. update-boot success with this version of coco
http://hackndev.com/node/29
found here.

I'mat a login screen, but I have no method of entering a log/pass. The USB port is too small for my kbd.

... loading

I have played with the Zire 71 and 72, I've gotten both to boot, but haven't had much success beyond that. But I haven't worked on them a lot. Your best bet is a Palm Tungsten, like T2, T5, TX, or maybe an E or E2.

This must be a problem with a documented resolution, but I can't find it- I have successfully booted the angstrom distro on the device, and it challenges me with a log/pass- before it loads x11 and any virtual keyboard. I have no way of entering text on the device.

Any hints/clues hans?

If you have angstrom booting, then switch to the Reware disk image for that device. The Reware image is all set up to be easy, so no password prompts and such. In the bitbake file for building the image, I set this to disable the login. I forget how to disable it once the image is built:

ROOTFS_POSTPROCESS_COMMAND += "set_image_autologin"

hey very cool! I did not know about this project thanks for the video.

I've been running PDa on my nokia n810 but I haven't had time to get scratchbox running to compile the latest version

So I downloaded the .IPKs (tcl, tk and pd), unpacked and loaded them onto the zire, and used the package manager to install them.

in the console, I try running "pd" and the response is:

/bin/sh: pd: command not found

But I can do a tab-complete on "p" and see 'pd' in the list of commands. Frustrato. There is no icon to load pd in my opie launcher. What says you, oh wise Hans?

try rebooting it or running '/usr/bin/pd'.

Hans, this rocks!

After looking at the video and the Reware site, I want to play too, but before I start, I would like to know if the PDA will be ballzee enough to run my larger patches. (maybe some are better faster than others)

Will it run a patch with 10 oscillators? 20? 100? Is there some kind of benchmark that is commonly used?

I've been building effects and synths for a set of people who aren't necessarily interested in playing on stage with a computer so I want to find smaller simpler dedicated gadgets.

On the Reware site I saw some stuff about the Beagle Board. Does anyone know if I can make an all purpose pure data player out of a beagle board and an arduino board? Obviously, I would have to rewrite the patches to be controlled by the arduino. Maybe a small display, or not, but will it work for big full blown synths with lots of settings and samples?

The gridthing patch running on my 312 MHz Palm TX could serve as a benchmark. It is running at a 16kHz sampling rate. There are 20 nodes, each node is a two osc~ FM synth.

The Beagle Board is a faster CPU (ARM8) running @ 600MHz.

I've been following this project, possibly after i saw it here, or after i was googling stuff about running PD on small handhelds.

Now to acquire something unused. I'm sure i have enough technofetishist friends i could get something from.

I'll report back if this happens.

edit: something else, it may not be as simple as a PDA, but have you thought about rewaring a nintendo DS?

hola hans, still working on the Zire72s. I think an upgrade to the TX will be my next step.

Is there any hope of getting the GEM library installed on a pda?

So i managed to score an ipaq rx4500, seemingly the most underdocumented pda in existence.

It's not even listed on the familiar linux page.

Any ideas on my chances of running pd at any point in the future?

boom! palm tx is in my hands! it is so sweet to have pd in my manito caliente. I'll keep hacking away at the zire, back burnered...

now time to make some pdapda patch!

@godinpants said:

edit: something else, it may not be as simple as a PDA, but have you thought about rewaring a nintendo DS?

The best bet may be dslinux: http://www.dslinux.org/

the ds has such little RAM though, so it might not be feasible...

I don't have a Nintendo DS, but I think if it is already running Linux, it shouldn't be too hard to get it runing Pd. As for RAM, I have run Pd on Palm Tungsten E2, which have 16 MB.

.hc

The DS actually only has 4mb of ram. Although it is possible to expand that on DS linux now using the ram expansion that came with the opera browser.

Even thats only another 8mb i think.