[OSGeo-Discuss] Mobile GPS data collection...

[Tyler Mitchell]

I've also done some Pocket PC (windows) based mobile computing  
applications a few years ago.  This was on the IPAQ (before HP took  
over Compaq) and was a forestry field data collection from surveys of  
waste left over after logging.  We sold a few copies of it.

The weakest link was the database connectivity (and some general  
annoyances with the Embedded VB environment).  I ended up sync'ing  
with an Access db on the client PC through ODBC.  It worked pretty  
well, but had these weak links that were not the easiest for new  
users to handle.  It was certainly not a cross platform or flexible  
solution but filled the gap.

Also, the platform was very slow.  I found populating drop-down lists  
with more than a few values was slow. This was on the oldest model,  
266Mhz processor though :)  Anyway, all that just introduce a bit of  
what I've done.

I think that having a cross platform solution is ideal, but I'm  
thinking it's going to be tough due to the hardware and PC sync'ing  
issues.  It seems there are some solutions out there that allow  
sync'ing with the Microsoft ActiveSync using an open source protocol  
(I forget the name).  There also appear to be some issues with PDA- 
 >USB->Networking with windows host PCs due to drivers.  I'm curious  
if anyone has worked through that.  It'd be ideal to avoid the 'sync'  
problem and get straight into tcp/ip connectivity to databases or via  
rsync.

Any thoughts on this?  Others have similar issues?

Tyler