Stephen P. Tarzia

Remotecmd Linux driver

I wrote a Linux input driver for Remote Commander. This allows the use of a Palm Pilot as an alternative PC input device (replacing both the keyboard and mouse), allowing users with certain hand or wrist injuries to type using Graffiti penstrokes.

The motivation for this work is the deficiency of existing PC pen input systems. Word-level handwriting recognition on tablet PCs may work for writing sentences, but it fails miserably when strange character sequences must be produced (for example when writing code). Graffiti’s character-level input is the solution. My linux driver has the same functionality as Pebbles for Windows from CMU. The Palm Pilot runs the Remote Commander software and is connected to the Linux PC via an rs232 serial cable.

The newest version of the source code is available here. This was tested with a Palm VII PDA and Linux kernel 2.6.27 (Fedora 10).

An older version of the code is available here. This was tested with a Palm VII PDA and Linux kernel 2.6.17 (Fedora 5).

Note that there are two components. There is both a kernel module that must be loaded and an updated version of the inputattach utility that must be used to specify which serial port the PDA is connected to. Note that an older rs232-compatible Palm Pilot (such as the Palm III or VII) must be used.