oookay, bit of a long-form geekery post, but it does (nearly) explain why I am sharing shitty greyscale pictures for a while...
way back (vertical wavy-lines go here) I purchased a Casio WristCam - the WQV-1 specifically.
It took 120x120 pixel greyscale images, but was also the size of a (slightly bulky) watch.
It could also share these via infrared.
I had a Palm Pilot with infrared.
This *Worked* really well.
I took many pictures.
23 years go by (vertical wavy-lines go here) and stuff changes.
My Palm Pilot communicated mostly via IR as my laptop at the time had IR, my Nokia phones had IR, my WristCam had IR.
All was peachy and communication just happened.
That laptop is RIP (Pentium 133...) and most of the rest is now souvenirs of a more geeky time...
until I moved house.
and found the watch.
and its box.
containing the software.
and found the infrared serial adaptor.
and was prompted by Spangolin / @35millimetre about a photos-on-crap-kit project...
things joined together.
uh oh.
So far, so promising.
I have all the bits, should be pretty simple getting a never-used infrared adaptor made before the turn of the century working with modern kit via a usb-serial adaptor, right?
software built for venerable versions of Windows with hardcoded serial ports running on a modern, usb-only laptop with a flavour of Linux should fly, right?
getting a watch unused since 2008 (new battery added to check it was working, but no way to get the pics off, so abandoned) to live again, right?
New battery (CR2032) and a bit of cleaning, and we have life!
aww bless, it remembers the new century.
so shiny, full of hope, everything was new again...
sorry buddy, welcome to 2023's hellscape
RTFM time... nah, this watch was used so much that the majority of its interface is still muscle-memory ;)
software... ah, software.
screenshots do nothing to convey the joy of the Windows NT4-esque teal and boxes interface.
It runs under Wine okay, but not Win10 (I had a VM handy, useful for work purposes from time to time, don't judge) at all, under any compatibility options.
Remember that serial port Casio PAD-2 infrared adaptor?
software recognises Com1-8 only. in Wine. at 115200 baud.
Regedit in Wine.
HK_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Wine/Ports
add a String
call it Com1
edit its value to be /dev/ttyUSB0
(or whatever yours shows up as)
Ok that, then back the hell away from Regedit sobbing quietly.
next, I feel the need, the need for speeeeeed.
make sure you have permissions over your usb to serial adaptor.
sudo chmod 777 /dev/ttyUSB0
will do at a pinch.
next up,
stty -F /dev/ttyUSB0 -a
shows you what the port is doing now.
stty -F /dev/ttyUSB0 115200
sets the speed. yay.
that all done, set the watch to Comms -> PC, put it soooo clooooose to the infrared adaptor (like an inch or two max, and facing straight-in)
upload-all aaaaaand slowly it slurps the images down.
blimey.
it worked.
Next up, convert those pics from bmp to png (minor space saving as only 120x120 pixels anyway, but let's aim for compatible with today...)
Well bother.
I have now found my hardware keyboard to add in some ALT text for the pics in this thread, and my phone's mastodon client crashes if I edit my posts.
I will now go and cry in accessibility.
...and see if I can edit them on my laptop instead.
A quick meetup with someone else from here doing a random project and we have a few more pixels to share...
Run the Casio Link software again...
File -> options
set your output directory to where you can find it again (thanks Wine. your directory structure attempting to overlay that of non-Windows OSs is nothing short of random)
set your comms to port 1 and the PAD-2 adaptor
set your chosen output format (use BMP here)
Okay that stuff.
aaaaaaand...
wait, I can upload 1, upload all, but download is greyed out?
Oh. Casio made this a bit backwards in my brain.
Upload *from watch*
Download *to watch*
D'oh